County increasing employee salaries by nearly $11M

For the first time in 33 years, Oakland County has approved and will soon implement a new salary administration plan that will boost employee salaries, overall, by 3.16%.

Since 2017, the county has been working on crafting a new salary administration plan to ensure employee salaries align with their private-sector peers and that the county remains a competitive employer in the region. The increased salaries will also help the county in attracting and retaining qualified and talented employees.

The compensation plan covers 3,500 non- union, full- and part-time employees across all departments and 825 job classifications. The total cost to implement the salary plan, and anticipated union employee salary increases, is around $ 10.5 million. Over the next five years, that number could increase to $12 million, dependent on general salary increases approved by the county board of commissioners.

April Lynch, deputy county executive who oversees the department of human resources, said development of a new salary administration plan would be a “heavy lift” under normal circumstances, but the death of the late L. Brooks Patterson and COVID-19 caused significant delays in the development process.

“The salary study commenced in November 2017, and analysis of that data began the following January,” she said. “The recommendations for the new salary administration plan overlapped with the passing of the previous county executive. As the new administration began tackling the project, our focus turned toward the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In addition to those challenges, the new administration of County Executive David Coulter wanted to also review the wages of union employees to ensure the county could also competitively recruit and retain workers for those positions. The county has 1,700 union employees scattered across all departments including the sheriff’s office, facilities management, animal control, water resources commissioner.