‘No excuse.’ Beshear ready to pay social workers more. Lawmakers need to join him.
In a more just and rational world, Kentucky social workers would not need to get second jobs just to get by. They, along with teachers, would get paid as much as doctors and lawyers for the simple reason that they are a human safety net for the most vulnerable among us and crucial to the functioning of our society.
But we are in late-stage U.S. capitalism, seeing the erosion of important and underpaid sectors like social work, nursing and education. Social workers at a protest in Frankfort on Nov. 16 told reporter Alex Acquisto that the agency had reportedly lost 600 workers so far this year — roughly 14% of the total agency workforce.
“That has led not only to job vacancies that have remained unfilled, but to existing social workers taking on more cases than they can manage across increasingly greater distances. Multiple social workers said either they or their colleagues currently have cases as far as an hour away from the county in which they work because those counties, too, are struggling with worker shortages.”
COVID has only made the situation worse, increasing isolation, child abuse and poverty. As one speaker at the protest said: “We’re not asking to be overcompensated. We want to be able to take care of our families and not need food stamps, not need the same services we’re providing to our clients.”
It’s a dangerous situation for both social workers and the families they serve. Social workers, many of them bearing student debt, enter the workforce at about $34,000 a year to do one of the most physically and emotionally grueling jobs there is. It’s not surprising that fewer are willing to take it and many are leaving.
The loss of state pensions in 2013 only compounds the problem. State pensions were both a recruitment and retention tool, but after years of underfunding the state employee system — by both political parties — the General Assembly passed a “hybrid cash balance plan” for new employees which they put in Senate Bill 2 in the 2013 session. That plan is less lucrative and erases an incentive to stay in your job.
“Kentucky made a mistake by junking a critical tool that state and local governments across the country use to attract and retain employees: a pension,” said Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. “We need skilled and dedicated employees to take on crucial tasks like protecting our most vulnerable children. When we don’t compensate them, they leave, services suffer and the harm ripples out to the entire commonwealth.”
This is a bipartisan problem that should be solved in a bipartisan way. Gov. Andy Beshear says he’s willing to do his part. In an interview on Wedneday, Beshear said his proposed budget in January will see a big raise for social workers, and possibly, a proposal for loan forgiveness.
“We require a big education for these workers, then we don’t pay them enough to pay the loans,” he said. “Our social workers need a big bump, and a bump is needed by most state employees, with there no longer being a pension.”
The Republican majority has voted down Beshear’s past two proposals on raises. But as he and others have pointed out, the General Fund is in better shape. “Our General Fund has increased each year for the past three years, so we are in a better place than we’ve ever been,” he said. “All these expenditures we can do with the General Fund before we get to one-time money and at the same time, manage one of the biggest Rainy Day funds we’ve ever had.”
“There is no excuse now for us not to invest in them.”
That’s right. There’s no excuse — not political, financial or moral— to not properly pay some of the most beleaguered and important public employees. Let’s hope as lawmakers gather in Frankfort early next year, that they agree.
