Two days after declaring a Rankin factory a "sweatshop," Allegheny County Council Democrats announced they were backing down in the face of County Executive Dan Onorato's threatened veto.

 

Council's declaration barred the county from doing business with W&K Steel LLC and touched off criticism from people who said Democratic leaders pushed the bill through to please unions. W&K owners deny they're running a sweatshop and said they're considering legal action.

 

"After consulting with my colleagues on council, we have decided that we will allow the veto ... to stand at this time," council President Rich Fitzgerald said Thursday in a written release.

 

The author of the original anti-sweatshop legislation says council might have gone too far when it voted this week to apply it for the first time.

 

"I think we should use it as a teaching moment, a learning opportunity," said William Russell Robinson, a Hill District Democrat who voted for this week's bill.

 

Two of the bill's backers -- Fitzgerald and Controller Mark Patrick Flaherty -- showed little interest in the anti-sweatshop law before they announced their bids for county executive within the past month, said Kenneth Miller, an anti-sweatshop activist and one of the people who pushed the county to adopt its ordinance in 2007.

 

"We have half a dozen other complaints that have been made about specific factories," Miller said. He said he's brought them to Onorato, Fitzgerald and Pittsburgh officials, to no avail. Fitzgerald did not return a call seeking comment.

 

During the County Council meeting when the law was passed, Fitzgerald said it wasn't meant to impose specific wage and benefit thresholds on companies with which the county does business.

 

"The bill does not mandate that every vendor that we deal with provide health care or provide (a specific wage) -- it just talks about a relative pay, which would be like maybe the minimum wage in this country, that type of thing. And that would be deemed acceptable," Fitzgerald said then.

 

The lowest hourly wage cited at W&K Steel is $9 an hour, about half of what a union member makes for the same job, W&K's opponents say. Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

 

The law required Flaherty, the controller, to audit the county's Division of Purchasing and Supplies by 2009 to make sure the county was complying with the new rules. Flaherty, who spoke in favor of declaring W&K a sweatshop at the council meeting Tuesday night, never conducted the audit.

 

"We never really received any official notice to perform this audit," Flaherty spokeswoman Pam Goldsmith said. Though the requirement is included in the law, council members didn't include a fiscal note and special budget allocation to perform the work. "Without all of that, we wouldn't just go ahead and proceed with something like that."

 

W&K Steel got council's attention, Miller said, because unions organized the campaign rather than human-rights activists.

 

"The local labor movement is all jacked up. This is a fight for the local labor movement, so all of a sudden they have to deal with local labor," said Miller, who agrees with the W&K designation. "They came to the table with more political capital and a laser focus on W&K. We came to the table talking about human rights."

 

W&K President Edward Wilhelm blamed the sweatshop label on unions frustrated because they could not organize employees at his shop.

 

Catholic Charities and Jewish Family & Children's Services have helped refugees find work at W&K. Neither could be reached for comment yesterday.

 

Allegheny County's law is modeled on one Pittsburgh had on the books. Anti-sweatshop activists pressed the county to pass its law when Onorato and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl were talking about consolidating purchasing departments. The activists worried the city would be able to skirt its law and buy goods made in sweatshops.

 

"We wanted to make sure the county held its suppliers to the same standard," Miller said. "The county executive and the county controller promised us that they could and they would take the ordinance seriously."

 

The city law doesn't legalize investigations conducted by either council, said Doug Shields, who wrote the city's law. Onorato's spokeswoman listed that as one of the reasons he'll veto the bill.

 

"The county did what it did for whatever reasons it did, but now the ball's in W&K's court and ... they will probably have to go to court," Shields said. "Then, the ability of the county to regulate itself in such a way becomes an issue."