Pierce County deputies win wage gains. Can it stop ‘death spiral’ of departures?
Years of contract negotiations with Pierce County ended Wednesday when an arbitrator awarded the union representing the rank-and-file of the Sheriff’s Office a 15.8 percent wage increase over three years, a win for deputies that the union said brings them closer to offering competitive pay.
Whether the pay raises can stifle the flow of deputies leaving the Sheriff’s Office for other police agencies and attract new hires to improve staffing levels is an open question. The union said in arbitration that poor pay and benefits had caused a “death spiral” of deputies leaving and compounded workload and safety concerns.
Sgt. Shaun Darby, president of the Pierce County Deputy Sheriffs’ Independent Guild, said Thursday that the arbitration award was a substantial wage increase for new recruits. He said it doesn’t solve the whole problem of staffing and retention, but it’s a start. The union had proposed a 25 percent wage increase, and the county countered with 6.5 percent.
“Our number one interest is the safety of the citizens of Pierce County,” Darby said. “We’re glad that this arbitrator’s award recognized that and recognized that we were underpaid, and now that we’re getting a little bit closer to our competition, hopefully our staffing will improve and hopefully, the level of service of public safety to citizens will increase as well.”
Bargaining over a new contract began in spring 2024 and continued into fall 2025, when the union reached an impasse with the county on four issues: wages, longevity and education incentives, accrual of compensatory time for overtime and deferred compensation. Arbitration hearings occurred over three days at the beginning of March and concluded in April after the union and the county presented briefs for their closing arguments.
In a statement issued Thursday, Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello said the county deeply values the men and women who serve in the Sheriff’s Office.
“I want to thank everyone involved in this arbitration for their good-faith efforts to ensure competitive pay for our hard-working deputies,” Mello said. “We look forward to helping the Sheriff’s Office recruit the best talent to keep residents safe and make Pierce County a place people are proud to work.”
Sheriff Keith Swank, who testified on behalf of the union during the arbitration hearing, said in a Thursday morning post on X that the union had won a well-deserved compensation package. He said deputies deserved at least a 20 percent wage increase, and they almost got it.
“Now, it’s time to get recruiting! If you have what it takes to join our family, reach out,” Swank wrote.
The new contract runs from January 2025 through January 2027, which means back pay for deputies through last year. The long contract fight also means the union and the county will be back at the bargaining table next year.
The deputy’s union has sounded the alarm over low staffing for the past year as the Tacoma Police Department has siphoned away deputies with signing bonuses for experienced new hires. Darby said the Sheriff’s Office has lost 14 employees to Tacoma and that its wages were 30-35 percent behind the city.
The Sheriff’s Office had 40 vacant deputy positions at the beginning of March, according to the arbitration ruling. The ruling said the office had been approved for 12 more positions, but that was rescinded when it was unable to fill job openings. The union and the county disagreed over whether improved wages would fix the problem.
The union said the county was ignoring the effect of a recruiting and retention crisis in the Sheriff’s Office, noting that it was the county’s largest and most expensive department funded by the general fund. According to county budget documents, the Sheriff’s Office’s budget for the 2026-2027 biennium, including its Corrections Bureau, is about $406 million, representing 42 percent of the general fund budget.
Job openings for entry-level deputies say they make $84,822.40 to $112,257.60 a year. The county also offers a $10,000 hiring incentive for entry-level hires and $25,000 for lateral hires.
The staffing crisis, the union said, was spurred by severely depressed pay and benefits causing deputy departures.
Pierce County argued that the data did not support the idea that the difference in wages to Tacoma was driving retention issues. It said Tacoma has had to offer an “unprecedented increase” in its lateral incentive to compete to recruit new officers.
“The more reasonable inference is that there is something more than compensation driving the reason for Tacoma’s recruitment and retention challenges, which should not be attributable to compensation at Pierce County,” the county wrote, according to the arbitration ruling. “The fact that no Pierce County deputies left to go to Tacoma for all of 2023 and 2024, and most of 2025, demonstrates that very fact.”
The arbitrator turned to the words of a detective sergeant who runs the Sheriff’s Office’s background unit and recruiting, who testified about his experience of talking with job candidates who turned down a position with the department. The detective sergeant, Brad Van Dyke, said the unit reaches out to anyone who withdraws from the hiring process.
“When we reach back out to them, it’s usually financial,” Van Dyke said, according to the arbitration ruling. “They just can’t justify the amount of difference in money that we are offering.”
The arbitrator concluded that wages were not the only problem for recruiting and retention, but the “simple fact” was that the county’s offer was too thin and would be a detriment to efforts to fill positions and retain staff.
Disagreement also swirled around whether the county had the money to fund the union’s wage proposal, with the county contending that the union’s proposal would lead to layoffs in the long term. The union said the county just didn’t want to spend the money on its proposal or use the new public-safety tax to fund it. According to previous reporting from The News Tribune, the tax is expected to generate about $30 million a year, and the vast majority would be spent on existing services in the county court system and Sheriff’s Office.
“But the County misses an important point when it chooses to pull the purse strings closed or chooses to spend the funds elsewhere,” the union wrote. “It’s not the County’s money; it’s taxpayer money. And those taxpayers have been screaming aloud: they want more public safety; better paid deputies and more of them.”
Among other wins for deputies in the arbitration award are education incentives. It gives deputies with associate’s degrees an additional 2 percent wage increase and those with bachelor’s degrees an extra 4 percent.
Deputies also won the right to accrue up to 80 hours of compensatory time, or paid time off, that they can take at their discretion in lieu of overtime payment. According to the arbitration ruling, the union argued that this was a “wellness, officer safety and morale-driven proposal” that also benefited younger deputies who lack tenure and accruals to take time off.
“It’s good for the younger generation because they’re getting held over, mandatory overtime a lot,” Darby said in a phone call. “And for them to be able to bank that mandatory overtime as comp time so they can actually take some time off with their families, that’s a huge win, too.”
