Lancaster County courthouse workers look for raises in new contract (2024)

An arbitration hearing this week could benefit scores of county government clerical workers who believe their current pay levels are not keeping pace with the local economy.

Negotiations broke down earlier this year between the county commissioners office and the Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 1310, which represents courthouse employees from seven different departments.

Amid a stalemate, both sides can opt to hire an arbitrator to make the decision for them. In an arbitration hearing, both parties present their best arguments on their positions. The arbitrator then issues a binding decision that both sides must accept. Appeals are possible but rarely successful.

The two sides are set to meet Friday to make their cases, according to Thomas Borum, business manager for the local.

Pay is the main sticking point in the negotiations, according to Borum, who declined to give specifics.

Commissioner Alice Yoder said she didn’t want to comment while the contract remained unresolved.

Commissioners Josh Parsons and Ray D’Agostino did not respond to a request for comment.

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The bargaining unit’s contract expired at the end of last year and an arbitration decision may not come until later this summer. If workers do win higher wages, the contract likely would apply retroactively to cover all of 2024.

LiUNA’s Local 1310 represents about 130 county employees, many of whom are entrusted with important documents and chains of custody for a wide range of government activities, from criminal prosecutions, wills, lawsuits, marriage licenses and more.

The bargaining unit includes clerical employees, security officers, paralegals and investigators across seven county departments: The clerk of courts, the coroner’s office, prothonotary, district attorney’s office, public defender’s office, register of wills and sheriff’s office.

Sheriff’s deputies are in the unit but have a different pay schedule from other unit members and have their own union steward.

Wages for clerical employees are determined by job classification. According to the contract that covered 2022 and 2023, all paralegals, for instance, make $18.97 an hour, while all secretaries, senior secretaries and security officers make $15.68 an hour. For Lancaster County clerical employees, pay does not increase with seniority.

Employee turnover rates are often calculated on an annual basis. An LNP analysis found that in each of the last three years, at least four out of the seven row offices had worse annual turnover rates than the average rates for the overall county workforce of about 1,700.

Most employers should aim for a 10% rate of turnover, according to the business advice website business.com. In 2020, the turnover rate for the county government’s full-time workforce was 16.3%. In 2023, it dropped to 19% from a high of 25% in 2021.

With the exception of the district attorney’s office, every other row office covered by the Local 1310 bargaining agreement saw higher annual turnover at least twice in the last four years.

In 2023, the Coroner's Office (40% turnover), Clerk Courts (39%), Public Defender (35%) and Prothonotary (28%) all ranked in the top 10 of county offices.

Many of the row offices are also comparatively small, with 20 or fewer employees, making their turnover percentages look high when even just a few workers move on.

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Union dues

Not all workers covered by Local 1310 pay monthly dues of $30 or more.

Information about the union is not provided during staff orientations, according to Borum, a change that came after a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Janus v. AFSCME. The ruling made it illegal for public-sector unions to require non-union members to pay a “fair-share” fee for benefitting from union negotiations.

A non-union employee is still part of a unionized bargaining unit if their job falls under the unit's labor contract.

“In this negotiation, we asked to have some time at each orientation that the county has to explain who we are, what we do, the whole run-down,” Borum said.

The union currently has about 60 members in the bargaining unit, Borum said.

The courthouse relies on clerical workers to keep its complex bureaucracy afloat. The positions also often act as the face of the county, providing important services like establishing wills, scheduling court hearings, recording developments in criminal and civil cases, issuing marriage licenses and more.

Important work that, if done wrong, can disrupt lives in profound ways.

PennLive reported in April that staffing issues at the Dauphin County clerk of courts office had caused delays in criminal proceedings and failures in posting hearing schedules.

Editor's note: A previous version of this story misstated the member dues for the Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 1310.