Police union ratifies new contract

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey has announced that the Fraternal Order of Police voted overwhelmingly for a new contract.

The mayor said on his Facebook page that the vote was 572-13.

“This contract delivers raises for new officers that will help us recruit and retain the kind of officers that best represent Pittsburgh,” he said.

Robert Swartzwelder, the president of the union representing Pittsburgh police, supported the ratification, but felt that there was still more work to do.

“[The contract] will do absolutely nothing for retention or recruitment,” he said

Tuesday morning.

He said that at the end of this contract in 2025, the Pittsburgh Police Department pay scale would still be about $2,000 to $3,000 less than other police departments.

Specific terms of the contract were not disclosed.

Last month, Mr. Swartzwelder said that so far in 2023, 17 officers had either left or retired, dropping the number of sworn officers to 818. The city budget allows for 900 officers.

During a previous meeting with Pittsburgh City Council, Mr. Swartzwelder explained that the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police is losing recruits to other departments for higher pay and less overtime than they’re getting in Pittsburgh.

“Pittsburgh is just a farm club right now,” Mr. Swartzwelder said. “You come here, you get good experience and then you go somewhere else where you can make more.”

However, he believes that this contract will give officers “some uplift.”

“What the contract does here is, it’s improving on an Act 47 weary police,” he said, explaining that many of the officers have only worked under Act 47 restrictions in place during state oversight of the city’s budget. “They needed some uplift, but [this contract] is still nowhere near their peers.”

Mr. Gainey said the pact for the first time includes a “disciplinary matrix” to give officers and the public an understanding of what happens if an officer violates the law or fails to follow policies and procedures.

The matrix “puts everybody on notice” for what penalties could be implemented on officers who don’t follow policy, Mr. Swartzwelder said.

He said that the contract the FOP was presented with in September had a “vague and unclear” disciplinary matrix, so the union rewrote it and included some of the city’s financial propositions, which is how they came to an agreement on this contract.

City Councilman Anthony Coghill attended the voting session to ratify the contract and said that he could already see a change in morale among officers.

“I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to match the suburbs [pay rate],” he said Tuesday. “But already morale has been 100% changed.”