Donegal Township lays off road maintenance crew

DONEGAL TOWNSHIP, Pa. (KDKA) — Donegal Township is without a road maintenance department after the township laid the crew off.

Kathleen Miller is a native of Donegal, Washington County, and she thinks the township's move to ax the road and maintenance workers is not going to go well.

"It's going to be a disaster," Miller said. "It already is a disaster."

On Sept. 12, the board voted unanimously to lay off the four-member detail, telling taxpayers the road crew was not getting the job done.

"We asked the supervisors at the last meeting what's your plan because they laid off the road crew off," Miller said. "They said we'll contract out."

Miller says the workers are local, and that matters.

"You're not going to have a contract company from the outside that's going to worry about their neighbor down the street," she said.

"We need to have reliable resources for when we have emergencies," she added.

Miller thinks the real reason the workers got pink slips came down to one thing.

"This is just an effort to break the union," Miller said. "They have said they don't want the union here."

The International Union of Operating Engineers is the union representing the laid-off workers. The union says the workers have been trying to get a deal done with the township since December 2022. KDKA-TV reached out to the township for comment but did not hear back on Monday.