diff --git a/mrjob/bin.py b/mrjob/bin.py
index 4584ff721..59e587edf 100644
--- a/mrjob/bin.py
+++ b/mrjob/bin.py
@@ -857,7 +857,6 @@ def _run_spark_submit(self, spark_submit_args, env, record_callback):
                     os._exit(-1)
             else:
                 log.debug('Invoking spark-submit via PTY')
-
                 with os.fdopen(master_fd, 'rb') as master:
                     step_interpretation = (
                         _parse_spark_log(
diff --git a/mrjob/spark/harness.py b/mrjob/spark/harness.py
index 934776eae..68a40be02 100644
--- a/mrjob/spark/harness.py
+++ b/mrjob/spark/harness.py
@@ -17,13 +17,14 @@
 import json
 from argparse import ArgumentParser
 from collections import defaultdict
+from glob import glob
 from importlib import import_module
 from itertools import chain
 
+from mrjob.parse import is_uri
 from mrjob.util import shlex_split
 from pyspark.accumulators import AccumulatorParam
 
-
 # tuples of (args, kwargs) for ArgumentParser.add_argument()
 #
 # TODO: this is shared code with mr_spark_harness.py, which started out
@@ -281,13 +282,21 @@ def make_mrc_job(mrc, step_num):
         if args.counter_output_dir is not None:
             counters = [ca.value for ca in counter_accumulators]
 
+            # If the given path is an s3 path, use s3.parallelize,
+            # otherwise just write them directly to the local dir
             sc.parallelize(
                 [json.dumps(counters)],
                 numSlices=1
             ).saveAsTextFile(
                 args.counter_output_dir
             )
-
+            # Use regular python buildin file writer if the part-* file is not created
+            if not is_uri(args.counter_output_dir) and not glob(args.counter_output_dir + "/part-*"):
+                path = args.counter_output_dir + "/part-0000"
+                if not os.path.exists(args.counter_output_dir):
+                    os.mkdir(args.counter_output_dir)
+                with open(path, 'w') as wb:
+                    wb.write(str(json.dumps(counters)))
 
 def _text_file_with_path(sc, path):
     """Return an RDD that yields (path, line) for each line in the file.