The cost of four years of labor peace with three unions that represent more than 41,000 state government employees is not coming cheap to Pennsylvania taxpayers.

The state’s Independent Fiscal Office cost analyses of the financial impact of the proposed contracts with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 13, the Service Employees International Union Local 668 and the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 1776 puts the overall price tag at more than $1.1 billion.

That figure, according to the analysis released on Tuesday, includes the increased salary and salary-related benefit costs (pension, Social Security, Medicare and workers’ compensation payments) as well as increased health care costs to the commonwealth that the proposed pacts call for over the next four years.

The contracts provide a general pay increase of 3% that will be retroactive to July 1. Additionally, they include a step increase of 2.25% in April 2020 followed by a 2% across-the-board raise in October 2020; a step increase of 2.25% in April 2021; a 2.5% across-the-board raise in October 2021 and again in October 2022; and then another step increase of 2.25% in January 2023.

While the employer contribution for health care increases over the life of the contract, the employee’s contribution for those benefits will remain the same.

Having the cost analysis, required by a 2016 law, clears the way for the contracts to be executed and the salary increases they include to begin showing up in employee paychecks.

Dave Fillman, executive director of AFSCME 13, which is the largest of the state employee unions, said signing day for his union’s contract is scheduled for Aug. 28. He estimates that employees covered by that contract will receive the retroactive 3% raise starting with their first paycheck in September.

The SEIU 668 and UCFW 1776 contracts are expected to be executed in mid-September with the retroactive raises showing up in employees’ paychecks shortly thereafter, said Dan Egan, a spokesman for the governor’s Office of Administration.

Management and non-represented employees will receive a 3% raise retroactive to July 1 as well, Egan said. As for whether they will continue to receive the other contractually obligated raises that unionized employees will be guaranteed, he said that has yet to be determined.

“We will continue to evaluate future pay increases for management employees as they arise,” Egan said.

While the overall price tag attached to the contracts is hefty, Egan defended the raises as not out of whack with ones granted by the three prior administrations when considering the average pay increase per year.

“Taken together, the three contracts negotiated by the Wolf Administration in 2015, 2016 and 2019 result in a 3.8% per year average increase over eight years,” he said. That compares to the average annual increases of 2.7% granted under former Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration, 4.4% granted under former Gov. Ed Rendell’s administration, and 5.3% under former Gov. Tom Ridge’s administration.

Breaking down the cost of each contract, the Independent Fiscal Office calculates the increases in salary and salary-related benefits for the 30,307 full-time equivalent employees covered under the AFSCME contract over its four-year life to total $749.3 million while the increased cost of employer healthcare contributions for those employees totals $78 million, according to the IFO analysis.

The increases in salary and salary-related benefits for the 9,375 full-time equivalent employees represented by SEIU adds up to $266.1 million and the increases in employer healthcare contributions for those employees is expected to cost about $24.1 million, the analysis shows.

The pay increases and associated benefits for the 1,526 full-time equivalent employees represented by the UFCW total $26.8 million while the increases in their employer healthcare contributions total $3.9 million.

The Senate Appropriations Committee estimates that once the administration completes negotiations with the other smaller unions that had contracts expire at the end of June, the cost of all 16 labor agreements will result in increased personnel costs of nearly $2 billion over the next four years. Committee executive director John Guyer said that figure assumes all unions receive the same pay increases over four years that AFSCME, SEIU and UFCW negotiated as well as assumes management and non-union employees also receive them.

Nathan Benefield, vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg-based conservative policy center, called the negotiated pay increases “massive,” out of step with the private sector, and unaffordable for taxpayers.

“It’s great that taxpayers now know the price tag for these contracts, but aside from that, these costs have been less scrutinized than a “leave a penny” tray,” he said. “Governor Wolf just gifted more than $1 billion to his biggest campaign contributors without any transparency or legislative oversight. The conflict of interest is staggering.”

Fillman argued the pay increases provided in the contract are needed to address a problem the commonwealth is facing with employee recruitment and retention.

The raises are “not obscene. There’s no doubt about that," Fillman said. "But there is some incentive to keep folks in and get some folks to the door because recruitment is very low.”

*This story was updated to replace a reference to “non-unionized employees” with “non-represented employees.”

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.