Kentucky’s non-doctor health care workforce is on the mend, though state hospitals still have thousands of unfilled positions.?(Warodom Changyencham/Getty Images)

Kentucky’s non-doctor health care workforce is on the mend, though state hospitals still have thousands of unfilled positions.?

That’s according to an August report released by the Kentucky Hospital Association that shows 12% of positions in the state’s hospitals were empty in 2023, with nurses being the most in-demand. The data comes from 94% of the state’s acute care hospitals that responded to an association survey.?

The report shows Kentucky hospitals had a nearly 17% vacancy rate for registered nurses (3,899 positions) last year. That’s down from 19% in 2022.?

This decrease “indicates to us that all the hard work that our hospitals are doing is starting to pay off,” Nancy Galvagni, the president of the Kentucky Hospital Association, told the Lantern. “Things are trending in the right direction.”?

However, the number of vacancies is still too high, she said.?

“We don’t want to have a false impression that there is no problem anymore,” she said. “There’s absolutely a problem with 16% — almost 4,000 — vacancies. That’s very concerning. This is still a critical issue.”?

Kentucky — and the nation — have a well-documented nursing shortage, which was exacerbated by COVID-19-induced burnout and an aging worker population.?

“We’ve been having a nursing crisis, really, since COVID, the pandemic, which caused a lot of nurses to either retire early; some new nurses decided they didn’t want to continue in nursing, or certainly at the bedside,” Galvagni said. “And our members have been working extremely hard to invest, through pay, through efforts to retain nurses, to improve the work environment.”?

Retention and recruitment?

About 11% of hospital registered nurses are nearing retirement, the report shows. About 15% of the state’s RNs are 55 years or older, putting them about a decade out from retirement.?

Appealing to young Kentuckians is key for the hospital association, Galvagni said.?

“The older baby boomers are pretty much very few in the workforce,” she said. “So, our hospitals are looking (at) how they can appeal to those younger workers.”?

Sometimes staff visit schools to show students what a career in medicine could look like, she said.?

They want “to make health care careers appealing to younger people and exciting, and (we’re) trying to get them to think about health care careers when they’re choosing a career for the future,” she said. “We have to get more people choosing to enter the health careers.”?

Hospitals are also working to increase pay and offer better benefits for the nurses in their employ.?

During the 2024 legislative session, lawmakers passed bills that Galvagni expects to improve retention and recruitment for Kentucky’s nursing workforce.?

Among those are House Bill 194, which made it a Class D felony to assault a health care worker.?

“Of course, that’s not the silver bullet, but it’s helpful,” Galvagni said. “Hopefully (it) acts as a deterrent, and because that is a concern … for our health care workers.”??

Lawmakers also passed House Bill 159, which decriminalized medical mistakes made by health care providers. Galvagni believes this new law can help recruit people to health professions in the state.

“I believe it sets Kentucky apart from even many other states that don’t have that law,” she said. “I think all of these bits and pieces help make a better environment in our state for health care workers.”?

Meanwhile, staffing shortages in any health facility can impact patients’ experience, Galvagni said, especially when it comes to speed of care.?

“If you’re coming to the emergency room, it could mean a longer wait to get seen,” Galvagni said. “It also might mean that hospitals can’t have all their beds open. … Hospitals have a lot of physical beds, but you can’t put patients in beds if there’s not enough staff. It could mean, if you’re having elective surgery, that it’s a longer way to get that scheduled.”??

Other key takeaways?

The report shows, for 2023:?

• Kentucky’s hospitals have 8,641 full time vacancies for a total workforce vacancy of 12%. That’s down from 15% in 2022.?
• Registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and nursing assistants are the most needed.?
• Kentucky’s hospitals have 3,899 unfilled registered nurse positions, 254 licensed practical nurse vacancies and 1,264 nursing assistant vacancies.??
• Among registered nurses, there are significant shortages for psychiatric (24% vacant), medical surgical (23% vacant) and critical care (19% vacant).
• Millennials (39%) and Generation Z (23%) together represent about 63% of the current RN workforce in Kentucky. These workers are 40 and younger.?
• Generation X (born between 1966 – 1980) represents 27% of the RN workforce in Kentucky.?
• Baby Boomers (57 and older) are 11% of the RN workforce in Kentucky.?

Sen. Chris McDaniel, chair of the Appropriations and Revenue Committee, speaks to members of the press about the Senate's budget priorities for child care. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)

FRANKFORT — Child care advocates applauded elements of the Kentucky Senate’s budget, unveiled Wednesday, but said lawmakers have not gone far enough to save the struggling industry.?

The proposed child care spending is a “monumental investment,” said Sarah Vanover, a policy and research director for Kentucky Youth Advocates.?

“We appreciate the fact that this is more than what the House had delegated, that we’re moving in the right direction,” she told the Lantern. “We can build off of what is in this budget, but it’s not there yet.”?

The Senate’s budget bills cleared the Appropriations and Revenue Committee Wednesday morning and were approved 37-1 by the full Senate later in the day.

Kentucky’s child care industry — which some are working to rebrand under an “early childhood education” umbrella — is counting on a boost from the 2024 legislative session as federal COVID-19 dollars that helped stabilize the industry during the last few years are running out. This leaves many centers to cut pay for their workers, raise tuition for parents, cut services and even close.?

Without help from the General Assembly, Kentucky could lose more than a fifth of its child care providers, the Lantern has reported.?

The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy previously estimated that $300 million is needed to replace the federal aid that’s ending. The state Department for Community Based Services says the need at closer to $100 million.?

With the state help that is proposed in the House budget — a $52 million a year increase — experts estimated 16,000 kids could lose access to child care in 2024.

With the Senate’s proposal, according to Vanover, that number is 14,000.?

In his December budget proposal, Gov. Andy Beshear pitched spending $141 million over the next two years to stabilize the child care industry, as well as $172 million to begin funding universal preschool for Kentucky 4-year-olds.

What is the Senate proposing??

Charles Aull, executive director of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Center for Policy and Research, said “there’s some really good progress in the Senate budget proposal.”?

“From my perspective, it looks like the Senate has worked really hard to identify … how much General Fund dollars from the state actually need to be kicked in in order to continue some of the important changes that were made to CCAP (Child Care Assistance Program) over the past couple of years,” Aull told the Lantern.?

The Senate has outlined these budget lines for child care:?

• $28 million annually – $21 million from the General Fund and $7 million in federal funds – in 2025 and 2026 for reimbursements to child care providers through the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). This is a decrease from what the House proposed: $40 million, and what Sen. Danny Carroll requested in his Horizons Act: $66 million, though he voted in favor of the proposal on the floor. Despite the decrease, “that piece is still much more than we’ve ever gotten,” Vanover said.?
• $14.8 million annually to provide child care for child care providers. This is “one of the great things that the Senate had that the House did not,” Vanover said. Sen. Chris McDaniel, chair of the Appropriations and Revenue Committee, said this was included because “the most effective program that we had seen and that we had heard about is the idea that if you’re a child care worker, we’re willing to pay for your child care.”?
• $10.6 million for CCAP assistance for families at 160% of the federal poverty level. This is the same as what the House proposed.?
• $2 million annually to award Innovations in Early Childhood Education Delivery Fund grants.
• $2 million annually for the Employee Child Care Assistance Partnership (ECCAP). This passed into law in 2022? and incentivizes employers to help employees pay for child care.?
• $1.5 million annually to add a six-month adjustment period for families who are no longer eligible for CCAP. During that time period, those families would receive decreased benefits. This portion, McDaniel said, is to “eliminate the benefits cliff” for families.?
• $1.3 million annually to cover the cost of background checks for new child care staff. This is a point Carroll requested in his Horizons Act. These required background checks can cost around $90 per person, Vanover said. After that expense, they may reveal the person isn’t eligible for employment.?

“(The) reimbursement rate for CCAP is probably our top priority and that’s a large amount that is still dedicated to that,” Vanover said. “So that’s a win there as far as maintaining funding.”?

It’s “hard to say” if the steps are enough to stabilize the industry this year, according to Aull.?

“CCAP is one of those things that literally allows (families) to participate in the workforce and without it … they’re going to have to choose between … ‘can I find somewhere for my child to be while I’m working?’” Aull? said. “Or they (are) just going to say ‘it’s just going to make more sense for me to sit out of the workforce until maybe the kid is … five, six years old, maybe in grade school.’”?

Brigitte Blom, the president and CEO of the Prichard Committee, said many points in the budget are “steps in the right direction.” But, she said, there is “unfinished business” for lawmakers to address.

“We seek decisive action to transform access to quality, affordable child care with at least a $150 million per year above FY 2024 levels,” Blom said in a statement. This is “essential if we are to provide a strong start for our children and support for Kentucky’s workforce.”

“We also call for the necessary funding to support high-quality teaching and broaden access to higher education, crucial elements for measurable, long-term impact,” Blom said.

What is missing in the Senate budget for child care??

The Senate and House will come together to agree on a final version of the state budget. Vanover would like to see them maintain CCAP eligibility for families at 85% of the state median income.?

Without that step, Vanover said, “we could potentially lose a lot of working families that need child care assistance.”?

She would also like to see more dollars dedicated to CCAP based on enrollment instead of attendance.?

“CCAP, in the past, has paid only when children are there,” she said. “Which is not how schools work. You still have to pay teachers, you still have building expenses, those kinds of things.”?

The budget could still change, and the numbers could continue to fluctuate until it’s finalized.??

“As (the budget) currently exists on the Senate side, it’s a good step forward,” Aull said. “This is arguably probably the largest investment in child care that we’ve seen in terms of general fund dollars. And I think that’s something that’s worth celebrating and worth noting.”

Airport workers and supporters march during a rally at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on March 7, 2023 in Arlington, Virginia. The group, organized by the Service Employees International Union, is demanding Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority mandate paid sick leave and employer-paid health care for airport service workers at Washington National and Dulles International Airport. Virginia law does not require employers to provide paid sick leave. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

When the Minnesota legislature was debating a paid sick leave bill last year, business owners argued that such a law would not allow them to provide as many employee “perks” or be as “adaptive” to employee needs as they say they would be without such a requirement.? But a half dozen witnesses made a case for the need, with many workers sharing examples of the numerous times they had to work while ill.

Maria Vazquez, a member of a worker organizing group in Minneapolis, told lawmakers she frequently felt too sick to work her job as a housekeeper but couldn’t afford to not show up.

“And so there have been many times I have presented to work, not only with a high fever but to the point where my legs could barely support me and people would ask me why are you working and there wasn’t really a choice without the sick and safe time,” Vazquez said.

The earned sick and safe time bill ultimately passed and the law went into effect this month. Another bill providing paid family and medical leave also passed last year but takes effect in January 2026. Minnesota joins 14 other states and the District of Columbia that now require paid sick days. Meanwhile 13 states and DC provide paid family leave and medical leave, which provides for longer time off, according to KFF. Washington, which has had a paid sick leave law since 2018, has updated its law to cover accrual of sick time for construction workers, to take into account that these employees may have multiple employers in a short period of time. Those changes took effect Jan. 1. California workers recently won an increase in the number of paid sick days employers must provide, from three days to five days. In July, Chicagoans will be able to get five sick days each year.

And while there are still plenty of states like Kentucky that offer no paid time off — either for sick days or family and medical needs — the political momentum for paid sick leave is continuing in other states this year. Policy experts say that momentum may eventually force the federal government to pass federal legislation as more people recognize the economic value of paid sick leave.

Advocates for paid sick time in Alaska, Nebraska and Missouri are pushing ballot initiatives this year. The group Paid Sick Leave for Nebraskans wants to see full-time workers enjoy a minimum of five to seven days of paid sick time and for other employees to receive some paid sick time as well. Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages has launched a campaign to get paid sick time and an increase in the minimum wage on the ballot this year in their state. The amount of paid sick time for employees would correspond to their hours and employer size.

Policy advocates and economists say a lack of paid sick leave, which tends to impact the most economically unstable workers, forces workers to choose between financial stability and their own wellness as well as the health of their family and coworkers.

The issue is particularly pressing this month as respiratory viruses are surging. According to the Centers for Disease Control’s Jan. 5 update on respiratory virus activity, which includes the flu, RSV, and COVID-19, shows that visits to the emergency department are “elevated in all age groups” and rising, with the exception of school-aged children. Wastewater levels indicating infections are 27% higher. Hospitals are reporting a rise in COVID-19, flu, and RSV cases, including in Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, and New Jersey.

COVID-19 driving discussions

Molly Weston Williamson, senior fellow at the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress, said the COVID-19 pandemic played a part in driving the policy discussion about paid sick time.

“The pandemic placed a new level of attention on the need for paid sick leave, driving home the critical public health stakes as well as the economic and human costs of the status quo — a need only underscored by union action like the rail workers’ fight for paid sick leave,” she said. “That led to increased policy attention, from temporary COVID paid leave at the federal level in 2020 to new and expanded state and local protections.”

To improve these working conditions, some Democrats and labor advocates are advocating for the passage of legislation such as the federal Healthy Families Act, which would provide a national right to earn time off that is job protected and provides a way to calculate the accrual paid sick time, and the FAMILY Act, which provides paid family and medical leave benefits. (The Family Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, which was passed by Congress in 1993 over opposition from the business community, requires employers of a certain size to only offer unpaid family leave.)

A House bipartisan family leave working group has released a framework for legislative options for paid leave, such as public-private partnerships for state-run programs and paid family and medical leave tax credits. A federally funded program for paid leave was not included in those options.

In the past, Republicans on the federal level have disagreed with Democrats over how broadly to provide family and medical leave and how to fund that leave.

Sherry Leiwant, co-president and co-founder of A Better Balance, said that the released framework is a good step toward advancing more worker-friendly policies in Congress.

“Maybe the Republicans are coming around to recognizing that this is really important to people.”

And with more states passing laws on paid sick time, Leiwant said businesses may be realizing that they need more consistency, especially if they operate across state lines.

An economic necessity

The need for paid sick days to help stabilize workers’ finances is clear through the data, according to an Economic Policy Institute report released in November. Compared to 63% of private sector workers having access to paid sick days in 2010, 78% now do and during the same period, the percentage of the lowest wage workers who had paid sick days almost doubled, the think tank found. The report’s authors also calculated what workers would be giving up in housing, groceries, transportation, and other essentials for their unpaid sick days.

“If we think about taking off work without any assets or savings, that could have a very big impact on the family budget,” said Hilary Wething, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and one of the report’s authors. “If a worker loses wages for taking off five days for example, if they have RSV or their kid has RSV that could be their entire grocery budget for the month. If they take three days off, it could be the entire monthly budget of utilities and two days could be a monthly budget of gas, which could make it difficult to get to work. You can see how a series of events could cascade for them and become a much bigger problem than it had to be.”

State Republican lawmakers and business groups have often argued that paid family leave and paid sick time is a burden on businesses and may reduce workers’ benefits. But Wething said such arguments against paid sick time are not supported by the available research and that the stability in both the health and finances of workers could also benefit employers.

“If we have a healthier workforce, we have a more productive workforce and we have to remember that every sick worker can reduce businesses’ productivity,” she said. “I think a federal mandate allowing more people the opportunity to earn paid sick leave, essentially by having fewer people show up to work sick, will have an effect on the economy writ large from a public health perspective that’s going to be great for employers’ bottom lines.”

Williamson of the Center for American Progress, said it’s about time that the federal government learned from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and passed the Healthy Families Act.

“We know that paid sick leave works — for workers, for businesses, and for the health of our communities,” she said. “And yet, as we approach four years since a deadly pandemic hit our shores, at the federal level, the United States still does not guarantee a single day of paid sick time.”

Shane and Samantha Barnes with their daughters, Amelia, second from right, and Katherine. (Photo provided)

HOPKINSVILLE — More than 6,000 miles from home, U.S. Army helicopter pilot Shane Barnes texted with his wife, Samantha, about her weekend plans in Hopkinsville with their girls, Amelia, who is 5, and Katherine, who will be 2 in a few months.

It was Friday, Nov. 10, the day before Veterans Day. Samantha told Shane that his parents, Michael and Kelly Barnes, wanted to help her pull out decorations so they could get the house ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

They had been to Amelia’s school, University Heights Academy, earlier that day for a ceremony honoring veterans. Hundreds of current and former service members, including Shane and Samantha, were featured in photographs that lined the school’s hallways. Samantha had also been in the Army and flew helicopters before leaving the service as her family grew.

Samantha sent Shane photos from the school. She told him a teacher wanted both of them to come speak at the program in 2024. He responded with a smiley face in sunglasses.

In a flurry of messages between the Middle East and Kentucky, Shane told Samantha she ought to go find a restaurant that would treat her to a meal on Veterans Day.

“Make sure you get thanked for your service,” he texted.

Tragic news

The next day, Samantha and the girls joined Shane’s parents for a late lunch at Camo Caravan, a veteran-owned restaurant in Hopkinsville that was serving free cheeseburger sliders and fries to veterans and active-duty military.

Shane hadn’t been responding to text messages since the previous night. Samantha thought his unit with the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment had temporarily lost cell service — or maybe he was too busy to respond.

As she sat in the restaurant with her daughters and in-laws, Samantha received a phone alert from the Ring doorbell at home a few miles northwest of town.

She looked at the live video and saw berets.

Two men in Army uniforms stood outside her front door.

She turned the phone toward her father-in-law.

As fear spread from Samantha to Michael to Kelly, she stepped outside the restaurant to use the audio feed connecting her phone to the doorbell camera. The men asked her to come home immediately.

At the house, Michael took the children inside and waited while Samantha and Kelly received the news.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Shane Barnes, 34, died Friday, Nov. 10, during an in-flight training exercise over the Mediterranean Sea. He was among five Fort Campbell soldiers who were killed.

“The MH-60 Blackhawk was conducting aerial refueling training when the aircraft experienced an in-flight emergency, resulting in the crash,” the Department of Defense would announce days later. Military officials said there was no indication of hostile activity.

When they told Michael that his son’s body was not recovered, he wondered if Shane was still out there. Maybe he was in his life preserver, adrift at sea. Was he possibly alive, waiting to be rescued?

He was not, said the Army officials who went to Shane’s house to notify the family.

An early calling

Shane grew up in Sacramento, California.

Early on, he showed an interest in military service. He wore a flight suit from his paternal grandfather, who served in the Air Force, for Halloween in the fourth grade.

By the time he was in high school, Shane was one of the biggest kids on the football team at Jesuit High School. His brother and best friend Josh, two years younger, also attended Jesuit. Their mom worked for the school, helping direct campus ministries. Their father was a correctional officer.

Shane graduated from high school in 2007 and went to Gonzaga University on an ROTC scholarship. He turned down an opportunity to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in favor of a more traditional college experience. He majored in English but his focus was on military studies. As it became more evident he was headed for a career in the service, his mother worked through her fears.

“I realized that we need men and women of character, integrity and faith in those leadership positions,” she said. “And if God was calling Shane to that life … I wouldn’t stand in the way.”

Kelly also never forgot her son’s generous nature, a trait she saw when he was very young.

She recalled a day when she was driving in Sacramento with the windows down. Shane was about 4 years old. They came to stop beside a man on the street holding a sign. Shane asked his mom, what did the sign say? She told him the man was homeless and wanted help.

Suddenly, Shane tried to get the man’s attention through the open window. He wanted to talk to him. Kelly was worried for their safety and drove away quickly. She turned and asked Shane what he was trying to tell the man.

“We have an extra room at our house. He could live with us,” Shane said.

In the days after they learned Shane wasn’t coming home from his last deployment, his parents and his wife told stories about Shane to people who had never known him. It felt important to them to make others aware of how he lived and what he valued.

His priorities for his career and his daughters had everything to do with four generations of his family coming to live in Hopkinsville, Kentucky — a place none of them had known a decade earlier.

Getting started

Shane Barnes lifts his wife, Samantha, in an embrace on her return to Fort Campbell from an overseas deployment. (Photo provided)

After graduating from Gonzaga in 2011, Shane began training to be an Army aviator at Fort Rucker, Alabama.

That summer he had his first date with another ROTC graduate learning to fly helicopters. Samantha had graduated from the University of Portland in Oregon, where she majored in philosophy.

Before he asked Samantha out, Shane called his brother for advice. Where should he take her? Give her choices, said Josh.

It was around the Fourth of July in Enterprise, Alabama, and Shane asked Samantha if she’d like to go out to eat at a fancy restaurant. Or would she rather do something fun?

Fun sounded better, she said. So he took her to play miniature golf and then picked up a sack of burgers and headed to a drive-in movie in his truck. Samantha said it was a Disney double feature, probably “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Cars 2.” She laughs now and says she is a little fuzzy on what they watched.

When they finished flight school, Shane was stationed at South Korea. She went to Fort Lewis, Washington. But Shane saw his future with Samantha.

Establishing roots

In December 2012, Shane was on leave for the holidays and back in the United States. He took Samantha with him to Sacramento and proposed to her in front of the Christmas tree at his family’s home.

It would be another year before they could be married at a church in her hometown in Oregon.

But wanting to seal their marriage ahead of the ceremony, they found the only state that allows for a double-proxy marriage. On Jan. 22, 2013, the state of Montana declared them officially married while she was on the West Coast and he was overseas.

By August of 2013, they were both stationed at South Korea. It would take more than two years to get back to the U.S.

In February of 2016, they were sent to Fort Campbell and picked a home in Clarksville, Tennessee. Soon after they arrived, she was deployed to Iraq for nine months and missed his graduation from “Green Platoon,” a training program for any soldier seeking to enter the 160th SOAR.

Members of the 160th are known as the Night Stalkers because the aviation regiment was formed to carry out stealth operations, sometimes in the cover of darkness. Shane saw his work with the 160th as protecting people he loves from evil.

The 160th grew out of a failed attempt in April 1980 to rescue American hostages held in Tehran, Iran. U.S. officials decided to train an elite group of helicopter pilots and crew members to carry out a second attempt. Although Iran released the hostages on the day President Ronald Reagan took office, the new unit that would eventually become the 160th was taking shape. Its first combat mission was during the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983, six years before Shane was born.

Shane and Samantha’s first daughter, Amelia, was born in February 2018. They call her Millie. Katherine was born four years later. She goes by Katie.

A new hometown

In between the two births, the family moved to Hopkinsville. They bought a home just outside the city limits from a member of Shane’s unit who was leaving for another assignment.

“Shane called dibs on the house,” Samantha said. They had visited the place for parties and loved the rural setting. It had a pool and a pool house. Shane thrived with room to smoke meat and cook homemade pizzas every Friday night.

And he took more steps to make Kentucky their permanent home. He gave up his commission as a captain and became a chief warrant officer, ensuring that he would be able to remain in the 160th. Had he not done that, he would have earned promotions and been forced to take on new assignments, his family said.

He never wanted to “ride a desk,” said Michael.

Next, Shane and Samantha worked on getting his parents to relocate. During visits, Samantha would seemingly take them down random county roads to have a look around. In fact, she was hoping to get them interested in a new home.

When they did decide to move, it took more than they might have expected — selling an RV, giving household goods away, packing up his parents, too, to join them. And Kelly needed to retire from a job she loved but one that had changed during the pandemic.

In August 2021, they moved into a home near Shane and Samantha. Suddenly, there were four generations of Barneses in Kentucky.

Shane had already taken to life in his new hometown when his parents arrived. He was always up for a community event — Summer Salute in Hopkinsville, the Ham Festival in Cadiz, a distillery on the weekend. His favorite restaurant was The Local Irish Pub in downtown Hopkinsville. He said they knew how to do a “proper Guinness pour.”

Kelly said she felt “embraced immediately” by the community. She got involved with the Newcomers and Neighbors club. Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church became their new church.

There were adjustments, though. They were not used to a slower pace, where a grocery store clerk might carry on a casual conversation with customers while slowly slicing a special order at the deli counter. Michael jokes that Sacramento had one and a half seasons all year while Hopkinsville has “six seasons in a few minutes.” And not many outsiders are prepared for Western Kentucky’s humidity in August.

But because of Shane and the decisions he made about his career, his family has a place that feels like home even though he will no longer be with them.

“Because we were invited and because we said, ‘yes,’ we have more than two years of memories with Shane and his girls that we otherwise wouldn’t have had,” said Kelly.

Samantha can’t know what the future holds long-term. But for now, she says she cannot imagine living anywhere else.

Shane gave her the kind of place where a person feels comfortable hanging their photos on all the walls because they know they are staying.

“He made that possible,” she said.

When military officials announced the deaths of the five Fort Campbell soldiers, they listed Shane as being from Sacramento. Kelly says her son would want people to know that he was from Hopkinsville.

Memorial service

The memorial service for Shane Barnes will be at 11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 2, at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church. His brother Josh will give the eulogy. The service is open to the community, his family said. There will be another service later when a headstone for Shane is placed at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

The family has suggested these organizations for anyone wanting to make a memorial gift:

• Big Sky Bravery: It provides post-deployment decompression programs for active duty special operations forces. www.bigskybravery.org

• St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital: Its mission is lifesaving work to find cures and means of prevention for childhood cancer and other pediatric, life-threatening diseases, as well as providing treatment and housing for families served. www.stjude.org

• Jesuit High School: A Sacramento Catholic high school that provides young men with a life-building experience and delivers an academically rigorous college preparatory education to prepare graduates for lives of leadership and service.? 2023 Hoptown Chronicle | All rights reserved

This story is republished from the Hoptown Chronicle, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit news outlet committed to covering local issues that are often overlooked or misunderstood and providing fact-based reporting that gives local people information they need to make good decisions about Hopkinsville and Christian County.

The amount a salaried worker would need to be paid before an employer could avoid paying overtime would rise to $55,068 annually under a proposed rule from the Department of Labor. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Salaried workers who have been ineligible for overtime pay would benefit from a proposed Biden administration regulation.

The Department of Labor’s new rule would require employers compensate full-time workers in management, administrative, or other professional roles for any overtime worked if they make less than $55,068 annually. Currently, the salary threshold is $35,568. The change is expected to affect 3.6 million workers.

The rule would also provide automatic changes every three years to the salary level to keep up with changes in earnings. U.S. territories that are subject to the federal minimum wage would have these same overtime protections, which rolls back a Trump administration change made in 2019.

“I’ve heard from workers again and again about working long hours, for no extra pay, all while earning low salaries that don’t come anywhere close to compensating them for their sacrifice,” said Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su in a statement.

The new standard salary level proposed by the agency would be tied to the 35th percentile of weekly earnings of salaried workers in the lowest-wage region of the country. There is voter support for a change in the current regulations. According to a 2022 Data for Progress survey of likely voters, 65% said they either strongly supported or somewhat supported raising the salary threshold for overtime pay.

The rule will go through a public comment period as part of the rulemaking process to give supporters and opponents time to offer feedback. The process can take months, which could mean it won’t be finalized until next year. Labor rights advocates and economists say that people working in retail, restaurants and healthcare would be among the workers most affected by the regulation.

Judy Conti, director of government affairs at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy nonprofit, said many workers who do overtime eligible work are paid just over the current threshold so their companies can avoid paying time-and-a-half. The proposed rule would help address this, she said.

“A lot of these dollar stores call people managers and supervisors and pay them $36,000 a year. Then they claim that they’re overtime exempt and they may do a little managing and they may do a little supervising, but mostly they’re working the cash register or they’re stocking shelves or they’re unloading in the back. They’re not doing work that is considered truly bona fide executive, professional or administrative work,” she said.

Conti added that this rule would provide incentive to employers to manage employee time wisely or hire more workers to handle the workload.

“… There’s [currently] no incentive to really manage that time wisely and see if it should instead be spread to other people,” Conti said.

Erica Groshen, senior economics adviser at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said the regulation should be fair on employers.

“I think the important thing to realize is that this will affect all of those employers equally,” she said. “It’s not putting some at a disadvantage compared to others. It’s going to change the playing field for everybody. You could argue that it’s going to change the playing field more for employers who were actively trying to take advantage of the erosion of the applicability of the law.”

In terms of the potential effects on the economy, Groshen said there could be some pass through to prices for consumers depending on how competitive the industry.

“To the extent that these companies are quite profitable, then the employers might try to hold on to market share by not increasing prices as much. Their profits might be a bit lower. Right now, nationally profit rates are actually quite high. They’ve been high for a while and rising. This would tend to reduce inequality if it comes out of profits. Otherwise, then the money is going to come from somewhere,” Groshen said.

That may mean that some employers will automate more services such as electronic ordering at restaurants or buying equipment for food preparation, she added.

The Trump administration last changed the salary threshold in 2019 from $23,660, set in 2004, to its current $35,568 salary level, which was significantly lower than the $47,476 level the Obama administration tried to implement in 2016. A federal judge blocked the Obama administration’s effort saying that the threshold was too high and that the administration did not have the authority to make that particular change. Twenty-one states, including Nevada, Arizona, Kentucky and Wisconsin, brought the lawsuit. The states argued that the rule “could deliberately exhaust state budgets” and was unconstitutional. In 2017, the same judge, an Obama appointee, ruled against the regulation again.

Conti said she’s optimistic that the rule is less likely to be blocked this time. She argues that the judge’s reasoning for stopping implementation of the rule lacked “legal or economic support.” Attorneys for law firms specializing in employment and labor law, however, are still anticipating legal action against the rule. Some attorneys suggest that the lack of a Senate-confirmed labor secretary makes the regulation more vulnerable to legal action. Biden nominated Su for labor secretary six months ago.

Many of the same groups that opposed or were critical of the overhaul of overtime regulations during the Obama administration have taken similar positions on the Biden administration’s effort. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called on the Department of Labor to “adjust” the rule. It did not release any specifics for what it wants the agency to do, but criticized the department’s proposal to automatically change the salary threshold every few years.

“The Department of Labor’s proposed overtime regulation is the wrong rulemaking at the wrong time,” Marc Freedman, vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Workplace Policy, said in a statement.?“It represents a more than 50% spike in the salary threshold and will increase costs for small businesses, nonprofits, and other employers at a time when businesses already face persistent workforce shortages that are hindering the economy.”

Industry groups such as the National Restaurant Association and National Association of Manufacturers have been critical of the rule for similar reasons.

Conti said she sees the proposed rule as stimulating for the economy and good for employees as well as employers.

“Adding jobs and getting more money into more people’s hands is good for the economy,” Conti said. “We’ve seen a lot of workers over the past couple of years walking away from jobs when they’re overworked, when they don’t have time for themselves and when they don’t have time for their families. Making sure that workers have moderate work weeks that are 40 hours is good for employers. They’re not going to burn out their employees.”

Keaira Mark, a former call center worker for Maximus, and current Maximus employees Katherine Charles Sasha Tyson, and Deondra Bridges in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Aug. 25, 2023. The women were in Washington to take part in the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. (Photo by Casey Quinlan/States Newsroom)

Call center workers that help Americans navigate the ACA marketplace and Medicare used this year’s March on Washington to spotlight their demands for more paths to advancement, higher pay, and more breaks between calls.

They’re looking to bring government attention to their cause after previous efforts to get the attention of officials with the Department of Labor and Department of Health and Human Services have not yielded results.

They say that the issues they are facing are connected to racial and gender inequities at Maximus, a Virginia-based private company that contracts with U.S. Health and Human Services as well as other federal agencies. A 2023 report found only 2% of managers with frontline customer service experience were internally promoted.

Sixty-nine percent of frontline workers were Black, Latino or other people of color, while the same demographics composed only 21% of executives and senior managers, according to the report from NAACP, Communication Workers of America and Strategic Organizing Center.

For the 60th anniversary of the historic march for civil rights and economic opportunities for Black Americans, a group of organizations with a diverse set of focuses — racial justice, labor rights, student debt, LGBTQ equality, and voting rights, to name a few — gathered in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

This march came on the heels of what has been called a “hot labor summer” after everyone from hotel workers to actors have gone on strike, and UPS drivers secured a generous new contract after threatening to strike.

Maximus employees are hoping to achieve their own gains. Katherine Charles, a call center worker from Tampa, Florida, who came to D.C. for the march, said she wants federal officials to investigate the company because of the way it treats workers.

Maximus has made multiple rounds of layoffs this year. In January, 143 workers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and more than 100 workers in Bogalusa, Louisiana, were laid off and did not receive severance, according to the Louisiana Illuminator. In May, Maximus laid off more than 700 workers, who received severance packages.

The CWA filed an unfair labor practice complaint in May, accusing the company of using the layoffs and other union-busting tactics as retaliation for organizing. Call Center Workers United held demonstrations after the layoffs, including a May protest outside of the Department of Health and Human Services office in Washington D.C., and a June protest at a Maximus office building in Chester, Virginia.

Victoria Miller, an organizer at the CWA, said it’s been challenging to organize because of all the layoffs this year.

“I don’t believe it is fair for a place where the workforce is majority female, single mothers, to be laid off massively without any notice like they have done before …,” she said. “We have a federal contract, but we are not treated as federal employees.”

Keaira Mark, a former Maximus worker who was laid off in May and lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, came to D.C. to march to support the many people she knows who still work there. “Even though I don’t work there, I still have friends who work there. My mom still works there,” she said. “We’re looking to get more exposure and hopefully community support and government support, and put some pressure on Maximus to change.”

Maximus workers also told States Newsroom that they need more time off between calls, because some of the calls they receive can be abusive, and it’s challenging to go right from one like that to the next.

They argue that their employer has enough money to improve working conditions. The business expects to generate $4.875 billion to $4.975 billion in revenue this year, according to Maximus’ August investor presentation. Maximus employs more than 35,000 employees in the U.S. and internationally, and its workers handle 7 million contact center inquiries per month and 43 million calls annually about federal health insurance enrollment.

The NAACP, CWA, and SOC wrote to Department of Labor officials in March bringing attention to a lack of workers of color and women in leadership positions at the company, which brought in 48% of its revenue in fiscal year 2022 from U.S. federal services according to the August presentation. The groups said that Maximus should be investigated for what they say is a noncompliance with laws protecting against discrimination.

Maximus employees have engaged in multiple walkouts to bring attention to calls for improved working conditions. In November, call center workers held walkouts in Mississippi, Virginia, Kentucky, and Louisiana to fight for pay of $25 an hour and more breaks in between their calls. At the time, Maximus said workers received two 15-minute breaks and one half-hour lunch break.

In response to questions about whether Maximus plans to improve working conditions, a spokesperson for the company told States Newsroom in an email, “We are always focused on ways to strengthen benefits for our employees. For example, we improved pay and compensation above the minimum wage and reduced employees’ out-of-pocket health care expenses.”

Maximus said it increased pay and compensation before an executive order finalized the minimum wage increase for federal contractors and said it pays call center employees a starting wage of $16.20.

“In certain geographies, and depending on the time of year, Maximus exceeds that wage,” the spokesperson said.

Disclosure: Casey Quinlan was previously a member of the Washington-Baltimore NewsGuild as a reporter for the American Independent. The NewsGuild is a sector in the Communications Workers of America.

For roughly a decade, advocates, legislators and workers pushed to pass legislation offering better workplace protections for pregnant workers. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act passed in December and became effective on June 27, 2023. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for A Better Balance)

Almost two months after workplace accommodations for pregnant workers became law, the rules surrounding what employers can and cannot do have yet to be finalized — but that doesn’t mean the protections are not in place.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s proposed regulations are expected to offer more clarity once finalized, but workers can still access their rights under the new Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and employers are still required to understand the law and follow it.

Here’s what you need to know about why workers say the law was needed, what workers’ rights are under the law and employers’ obligations to employees.

Why the law was needed

Other federal laws cover the rights of pregnant workers but advocates have long argued that many of them are too narrow to address the situations pregnant workers face when they seek accommodations. The Americans with Disabilities Act, for instance, does not consider pregnancy to be a disability but pregnancy-related complications, such as preeclampsia, do qualify. Under the ADA, a pregnant worker can’t seek out an accommodation in the hope of preventing dangerous pregnancy-related complications.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, passed in 1978, prohibits discrimination against pregnant employees but it’s difficult in practice for workers to receive accommodations under the law, because it requires finding another worker who received accommodations like the ones they’re seeking. This can be a challenging and time-consuming process because workers may not be aware of what kinds of accommodations their coworkers are seeking or may not have access to this information in the way their employer does.

Despite those laws, 23% of mothers said in a survey last year that they had weighed whether or not to leave their job because their workplace lacked reasonable accommodations or they were worried about pregnancy discrimination.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which passed in December, has been in the works for a decade.?In the intervening years, states began taking their own action. As of April, 30 states — including Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, and Tennessee — as well as the District of Columbia, and four localities, had similar laws to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, some of which may offer stronger protections in certain situations than the PWFA, according to A Better Balance, a worker advocacy nonprofit. Twenty states did not have state protections like these at the time of its state analysis, including Alabama, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The nonprofit has a comprehensive list of state policies on pregnant workers’ rights.

What are your employee rights?

Congress and federal agencies, employment agencies, labor organizations, private employers with 15 or more workers, and state and local governments with 15 or more workers are subject to the law, according to the EEOC.

While the rules haven’t been finalized, if you think your rights have been violated, you can already take action. On June 27, the EEOC began allowing workers to file charges under the law for violations that occurred on that day or later. Workers need to take this step before they can file a lawsuit against their employer. The law protects employees and job applicants who need accommodations because of pregnancy, childbirth, or conditions related to pregnancy and childbirth. Under the PWFA, pregnant workers should be able to make requests for reasonable accommodations, such as closer parking, uniforms in their size, and additional rest time.

The PWFA is similar in many ways to the Americans with Disabilities Act. It does not require an employer to provide an accommodation if doing so would bring it “undue hardship,” or in other words, it would come at great difficulty or expense to the employer.

But the law is also a bit different than the ADA. Unlike the ADA, where the employee has to be able to do the essential functions of their job or they no longer qualify for accommodations, the PWFA says that workers do not always have to be able to perform an essential function temporarily because of their pregnancy. It is expected that they will be able to resume those duties in the near future.

The EEOC’a proposed rules define the “near future,” or when workers will be able to perform essential functions of their job after being temporarily unable to do so, as generally going up to 40 weeks. This does not mean workers will always have 40 weeks but that needing 40 weeks doesn’t disqualify an employee for the accommodations. The regulations also say that if there are multiple options for effective accommodations, the employer should favor the worker’s preferred accommodation.

Liz Morris, deputy director for the Center for WorkLife Law, said applicants and new employees who want to work remotely because of their pregnancy will also be covered in the PWFA. Applicants can request accommodations during the hiring process itself, such as making modifications to a physical test. If a pregnant applicant anticipates that they will need adjustments from an employer because of their pregnancy, the applicant can agree to a general policy without accommodations and then request them once they are employed.

The EEOC regulations also get into detail about pregnancy-related medical conditions that apply to workers under the PWFA, A Better Balance Vice President Elizabeth Gedmark said.

“…The proposed rule discusses pregnancy-related issues ranging from preterm labor to anxiety and depression while also making clear that limitations can also be ‘modest, minor, and/or episodic,’” she told States Newsroom over email.

Lactation, potential pregnancy, miscarriage, infertility and fertility treatments, and having an abortion are also listed in the regulation. An employee who needs to take leave because of a limitation due to a condition related to pregnancy and childbirth should qualify for that leave under the PWFA, according to the proposed rules. The EEOC gives miscarriage and childbirth as examples of reasons for workers to take different forms of leave. The same definition of “near future” also applies. I

A Better Balance provides sample letters for employees to use when requesting work accommodations related to pregnancy.

What employers need to know

The rules are going through a public comment period through Oct. 10, and Victor Chen, director of communications at the EEOC, told States Newsroom that employers are not required to follow the proposed rules just yet. But he added that the PWFA itself provides direction for employers. He suggested employers read the EEOC’s list of commonly asked questions and listen to its webinar. He said the EEOC “will move as quickly as possible to finalize the regulation” after the comment period closes.

Morris said that although the regulations aren’t set in stone, “If I were an employer, I would certainly follow them for now, as they are an excellent indication of how the law will ultimately be interpreted.”

The rules specify that employers can’t deny work to an applicant or employee because of their need for an accommodation, make a decision for a pregnant worker without any discussion on which accommodation they will receive or force them to go on leave if there is an accommodation they could take to continue working. They also can’t retaliate against workers for advocating for themselves under the law and reporting discrimination nor can they try to stop workers from enjoying their legal protections.

Michael Fallings, the managing partner of Tully Rinckey PLLC’s Austin office, who specializes in federal employment law, said he thinks it will be useful for employers to have more information on how to fairly treat pregnant workers seeking reasonable accommodations.

“I think it could be helpful for employers because I think some employers are in fear of litigation at times and now that you have a law in place that says what you can or cannot do, it provides some basis for the employers,” he said.

Morris said that employers should keep in mind that they need to swiftly provide accommodations and if they can’t, they should think about interim accommodations. The proposed EEOC regulations explain that an “unnecessary delay” could result in a violation of the law.

The future of the law and its regulations

The law’s regulations may be tweaked during the rulemaking process and could be eventually challenged in the courts. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which has been involved in numerous lawsuits challenging abortion rights,? called the proposed regulations “federal overreach.” The ADF, a legal advocacy group, has argued that the administration doesn’t have the legal authority to include abortion in its implementation. Morris said that accommodations related to abortion are reasonable to include because the EEOC has always defined pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions in the courts as including abortion.

Organizations that supported or opposed the law will also have the opportunity to suggest changes to the regulations. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce advocated for the passage of the law and will provide a public comment on parts of the rule that could be changed, the group told States Newsroom, but declined to elaborate on what should be revised.

Morris said her organization also plans to submit a public comment on the proposed EEOC regulations. She wants to see some revisions on the issue of medical certification to make it even easier for employees to receive accommodations.

“A shocking number of people don’t receive prenatal care because they don’t have access to it either because of financial barriers or because they live in a remote area where it’s difficult to travel to, to receive prenatal care,” she said.

KCTCS wants to reverse the "troubling trend” of Kentuckians dropping out of postsecondary education because of finances. (Getty Images)

At least 45 companies have already signed up to be Education First Employers. The program also requires them to partner with colleges in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. There are 16 KCTCS campuses in Kentucky, and the system is the largest provider of postsecondary education in the commonwealth.?

Businesses in health care, manufacturing, skilled trades and other fields who have signed onto the program include Amazon, King’s Daughters Medical Center, Duke Energy and many others.?

Employers must also meet or exceed paying the living wage in their area and show a commitment to diversity and inclusion. What they get in return are filled positions and better retention of employees who want to advance in their companies, KCTCS said.?

“This is an innovative program that is truly moving from just credentialing in our education system to skills based training for specific employers,” Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday. “These students are not only fully prepared for the workforce, but the idea is they could start with the company that’s been helping them get through their education. This is truly a win-win partnership.”?

Through this program, KCTCS wants to “reverse this troubling trend” of Kentuckians dropping out of school because of finances, it says.?

The Kentucky Lantern previously reported that about a third of college students in the state are low-income. And those who drop a class because of financial challenges are less likely to finish their degree. Currently about 54% of Kentucky adults have a postsecondary degree. The state wants to see that number at 60% by 2030.?

“KCTCS colleges are doubling down on partnerships with Kentucky companies to increase the skill level of our workforce,” KCTCS Vice President of Workforce and Economic Development Jessie Schook said in a statement. “We are collaborating with these businesses to support learners as they balance work responsibilities with their education. In doing so, we will increase program completion rates and ultimately advance the skill level of Kentucky’s workforce.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, shown here at an event in June, touted a new Department of Labor rule while in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023. The new rule would improve wages and workplace protections for people working on projects that get federal funding. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Construction workers who work on federal projects are poised to receive better wages and worker protections under a Department of Labor rule touted by Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday.

Speaking at a union hall in Philadelphia, Harris praised the Biden administration’s economic agenda and pointed out that the new rule would be the first update in more than 40 years to the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires paying prevailing wages on public works projects. The Reagan administration changed the definition of prevailing wages in 1983.

“Let’s agree these workers deserve our recognition and appreciation and they deserve something more,” Harris said. “They deserve a raise. … Many workers are paid much less than they deserve, much less than the value of their work … in some cases by thousands of dollars a year, and that is wrong and completely unacceptable.”

The final rule transforms how prevailing wages, or the hourly rate of wages paid to workers in a given area, are calculated. It would base wages off of at least 30% of workers instead of 50% of workers in a trade in a certain locality, which the Biden administration said will help ensure workers’ prevailing wages aren’t dragged down by employers who pay low wages.

The regulation also makes it easier for the agency to withhold funds from contractors to ensure workers are paid properly and protects workers from employer retaliation, Biden administration officials have stated.

The rule will be effective in about two months and would affect an estimated 1.2 million workers.

Harris praised the work of union leaders during her speech. She called Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU), who was present at the speech, “a partner,” and thanked Jimmy Williams, the general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. After the speech, she planned to tour Interstate 95. In June, part of I-95 collapsed when a gasoline tanker exploded, and the man driving the vehicle died. Harris applauded the swift rebuild of the section, which took only 12 days. The rebuilding effort received federal funding.

Sharita Gruberg, vice president for economic justice at the National Partnership for Women and Families, said that the original formula for wage standards was supposed to make sure that federal contracts are paying workers a competitive wage but the Reagan administration’s changes in the 1980s weakened the rules.

“There’s just been all of these artificial barriers constructed since the ’80s that weaken this really strong rule that’s supposed to protect the local economy and protect workers,” Gruberg said. She added that the idea was “to make sure that these local economies are not subject to a large influx of federal dollars going to construction companies that are paying less than market rate and creating a race to the bottom.”

The administration is prioritizing these changes after it has invested billions in manufacturing facilities and repairing roads through the CHIPS and Science Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Gruberg said the administration is trying to make the most out of those investments by making these reforms.

“There’s two paths here,” she said. “One, we update these rules and make sure that these investments are reaching their full potential for communities, or we don’t and lose workers a lot of money.”

Progressive think tanks have argued that such changes will make it easier for workers to receive higher pay and better benefits. In its comment on the proposed rule in May 2022, the Economic Policy Institute said research has established that prevailing wage laws increase worker pay, help more workers get pension plans, and improve workers’ health care coverage as well as make the construction industry more equitable for women and workers of color.

The Laborers’ International Union of North America also supports the change and said it will protect many LIUNA members.

“With massive investments in infrastructure through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs with prevailing wage rules, construction workers across the nation will benefit from the strengthened wage floor,” LIUNA stated.

There is still opposition to the rule from the Associated Builders and Contractors, a non-union trade group, which has said it will take legal action in response to the rule. The trade association said there’s no timeline yet for when they will bring a lawsuit.

Ben Brubeck, vice president of regulatory, labor, and state affairs at the Associated Builders and Contractors, called the rule a “handout to organized labor on the backs of taxpayers, small businesses and the free market” and said the regulation is “unnecessary, costly and burdensome.”

Miners have suffered more exposure to silica dust as more rock must be removed to reach dwindling coal seams. (Getty Images)

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration is hosting a public comment hearing in Beckley on Thursday on a proposed rule that could strengthen silica exposure standards — one of the leading causes of black lung — for coal miners.

The proposed rule would, for the first time, implement a separate exposure limit for silica dust specifically, cut the maximum exposure limit for silica dust to 50 micrograms per cubic meter for a full-shift exposure and create an “action level” for when exposure comes at 25 micrograms per cubic meter for a full shift.

Advocates for those living with pneumoconiosis, commonly referred to as black lung, and the families of workers who have died from it, however, hold concerns about the implementation and enforcement of these standards in the proposed rule.

Sam Petsonk, a West Virginia-based attorney who has represented “many hundreds” of coal miners in claims seeking black lung benefits, said the current state of enforcement mechanisms and testing standards, among other policies in the proposed rule, has turned it into “utter swiss cheese.”

“The administration and leadership [at MSHA] has all the right priorities and there is something deeply commendable in proposing this rule, but the bureaucracy in MSHA has written a rule, a proposed rule, that undermines that,” Petsonk said. “I believe the agency means what it says, that the leadership does intend to do what they’ve committed in establishing a silica exposure limit that will actually be protected and enforceable.”

That’s the point of the public comment, Petsonk continued, so people will have the opportunity to lay out potential problems with the proposed rule and have MSHA respond to those concerns.

For Petsonk and other advocates, weaknesses of the proposed rule boil down to three main concerns: No regular sampling for silica levels, no penalties for mining operations found not in compliance with the rule and no mandatory or enforceable protections for coal miners working in mines with elevated exposure levels.

If mines were found to be in violation of the proposed rule, there is currently no monetary penalty or other action to incentivize operators to correct the situation or to protect workers from being forced to continue working in dangerous conditions. Basically, Petsonk said, operators would be warned about the violation.

“It’s like saying if we catch you speeding we’ll ask you not to speed anymore and send you on your way and see how it works,” Petsonk said, “MSHA has the authority to issue citations and withdraw orders mandating that miners be removed from a violated area of the mine. I’d like to see that in the final rule — I’d like to see proposed monetary penalties and the withdrawal of miners when the dust is too high, too dangerous.”

In its current state, due to the proposed sampling requirements, Petsonk said it’d be incredibly difficult to find violations when they occur even if there was an enforcement mechanism.

The rule would not impose routine sampling for silica dust outside of what is currently performed by MSHA. Instead, it requires one-time sampling for all operational coal mines within 180 days of the rule going into effect. After that six month period, there are no guidelines for new mining operations that start and operators at active mines would have to opt in to periodic sampling for silica.

“MSHA has a limited presence in mines, and while they already sample for silica, clearly the quarterly sampling has not been efficient,” Petsonk said. “If MSHA’s sampling system was adequate to capture silica exposure, it would have done so already and we wouldn’t see the cases we see because they’ve been sampling for that over the last several decades.”

Self-reporting by coal mining operators is a longstanding issue and criticism within the mining industry, where safety violations can be easy to hide due to lack of oversight and enforcement and where the consequences can too often mean death or serious injury for workers.

Quenton King, a federal legislative specialist with nonprofit advocacy group Appalachian Voices, said this is why it’s important to have coal miners with first-hand experience appear at Thursday’s public comment and share what they’ve witnessed.

“You can talk all day about how important it is to have real oversight, how little coal mining companies can be trusted to test their air and whatnot. We hear countless stories of foremen hiding the testing results or rigging testing to suit them,” King said. “We’re really relying on the people who are inside, who got black lung, to say, ‘you can make this rule but without the power to enforce it, we can’t trust operators to follow it.’”

According to an advisory from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in 2018, it’s estimated that 20% of coal miners in Central Appalachia are suffering from black lung — the highest rate detected in more than 25 years. One in 20 of the region’s coal miners are living with the most severe form of the condition.

In recent years, there has been an uptick in the number of miners diagnosed with black lung, and they’re developing it at younger ages than ever before. This is due to the coal seams mined today, unlike in the past when it was abundant and openly accessible, being shielded by layers of silica-bearing sandstone.

“We’re seeing people in their 30s and 40s with X-rays we used to see in their 60s and 70s. People are becoming fully disabled earlier and earlier in their careers,” King said. “Black lung — it’s deadly. It’s incurable. At its worst stages it drastically harms and inhibits your way of life.”

The public comment meeting on Thursday in Beckley, held in room B102 of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy at 9 a.m., is the second of three to be held by MSHA. The first was held in Arlington last Thursday and the next will be in Denver on August 21.

Initially, there was no meeting scheduled for the proposed rule in Central Appalachia despite the high rates and impact of silica dust here. Days after the rule was published and the public comment period set, however, MSHA added the Beckley meeting in response to advocates’ outcries.

Those who wish to attend the meeting can do so and submit testimony either virtually or in person. It is encouraged, but not required, to register for the meeting here: https://www.msha.gov/form/silica-hearings-registration.

West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: [email protected]. Follow West Virginia Watch on Facebook and Twitter.

Naomi Knowles participates in a training program for construction workers in Deerfield, Wisconsin. Women’s employment is at an all-time high, but fields such as construction and tech management remain male dominated. (Photo courtesy of Mustang Christie/Operation Fresh Start)

After fears of a “she-cession” during the pandemic, women have returned to the workforce at unprecedented rates.

Much of the gain reflects a boom in jobs traditionally held by women, including nursing and teaching.? Many good-paying jobs in fields such as construction and tech management are still dominated by men, a continuing challenge for states trying to even the playing field for women workers.

In June, the national share of employed women ages 25-54, considered prime working age, hit 75.3%, the highest recorded since the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey started reporting the numbers in 1948. The share of women 25-54 working or looking for work also hit a new high of 77.8% in June, the third straight month it beat the previous record of 77.3% from 2000.

“It’s good news that women are finding jobs in this economy at a greater rate than they were previously,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute. She noted that brisk hiring in health care and government has helped more women find jobs.

But there is still a gap between rates of men and women in the workforce overall in every state except Vermont. As of March 2022, the latest figures available, the largest gap is 18 percentage points in Arizona, where 89.6% of prime-age men have jobs compared with 71.4% of women. The smallest is in Maine, where 77.8% of men in that age range have jobs compared with 77.3% of women.

In Kentucky, 69.5% of women ages 25-54 are working, the fifth-lowest rate among the states. The rate for Kentucky men is 77.1% — a gap of 7.6 percentage points.

Mothers of small children lost work at three times the rate of fathers early in the pandemic as they struggled to supervise remote learning sessions. Even when schools and day cares reopened in person, they often closed down unexpectedly during outbreaks, drawing out employment woes for many working women with children. Combined with early pandemic job losses in tourism and hospitality, fields where many women hold jobs, women’s employment dipped as low as 63.4% in April 2020, the lowest since 1984.

For some women, getting back to the workforce after the pandemic slump in women’s employment is a relief, and in some cases hybrid work has created the flexibility they need to return to jobs.

“It really means a lot because apart from the feeling that you’re contributing to your family, which is so important in today’s world, there’s just more fulfillment as a person,” said Deepika Gosain of Fremont, California. She started work in April as a learning and development specialist at a surgical company, finding that hybrid work helped her return to the workforce after taking several years off to care for two small children.

Health care and education represented the biggest gains for women in the past year, between June 2022 and June 2023, comprising about 778,000 of the 2 million jobs added for women, according to a Stateline analysis. Government and hospitality jobs added another 727,000 jobs for women.

Jobs in construction and tech management remain stubbornly male dominated, however. Men are 96.5% of carpenters and nearly 74% of computer system managers, for example.

Karen Arrigo-Hill is looking for work in financial tech again after taking a break to raise small children. Like Gosain, she’s used the networking group Women Back to Work for tips on California jobs for women who have taken breaks from work. She also participates in an incubator program for underrepresented genders in tech, called In the Lab Product Management.

“The biggest thing I notice is all the support there is for the women who took a career break for caregiving and want to return to work in technology,” Arrigo-Hill said. “This process of returning is a long process, and it really helps.”

States such as California, Massachusetts and New York are working to get more women into male-dominated fields.

A Democratic-sponsored bill in the New York State Assembly calls for $500,000 in funding to get more women into high-wage jobs, including construction and some tech fields, where they make up less than 25% of workers.

Elsewhere in the region, the state-funded Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women in June recommended passage of a legislative resolution saying that COVID-19 had an outsized effect on women, including on their jobs, and that “prejudices against gender and race have served to make it difficult for women to fill roles demanded by society and their professions.” In its annual report, the commission urged passage of bills that would provide more day care and improve pay transparency, which can lead to women earning higher salaries.

California has budgeted $30 million over the last two years to helping more women get jobs in construction, including grants for apprenticeships and child care.

“When we spoke with women in construction, they told us childcare costs were one of the biggest barriers to working in the trade,” said Katie?Hagen,?director of the state Department of Industrial Relations,?in a?statement.

In Wisconsin, using state, local and private funding, the Operation Fresh Start Build Academy is helping 21-year-old Naomi Knowles train for a career in construction. On a recent day she hung drywall in a home under construction in Deerfield.

“Being the only girl on a crew of all men, it feels like a lot of pressure,” Knowles said. “They expect you to be less than them. But I’ve proven them wrong. I love the people and I love the results — seeing this house go from studs to walls in here and siding. It’s amazing.”

Construction is an important field for women to get into because the pay can be good, there’s a labor shortage, and a college degree isn’t necessary, according to a forthcoming report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Since the pandemic started, there are 126,000 more women working in construction for a total of 1.1 million, though women still make up only 14% of workers in the industry.

“The percentage is so low for women that it can easily send the message that this is clearly a sector just for men,” said Ariane Hegewisch, the group’s program director for employment and earnings. The U.S. Commerce Department is also pushing to double the number of women in construction as federally funded infrastructure projects ramp up.

Vermont is the only state where prime-age women work at a greater rate than men: 83% compared with 81% for men. Vermont may be unique because of its mix of jobs, said Mathew Barewicz, the state’s labor market information director. “Vermont has a diverse industry composition without an overreliance on typically male-dominated industries [like] mining, transportation, finance.”

Progress in bringing more women to the workplace is likely to continue, said Beth Almeida, a senior fellow at the progressive Center for American Progress think tank specializing in women’s economic security.

“This generation of women ages 25-54 have more college degrees than any other generation of women, and having college degrees is a very strong predictor of labor force attachment,” Almeida said.

“They’ve made a substantial financial investment in their future. But their employment is very impacted by caregiving, because women have a greater responsibility when it comes to family.”

This story is republished from Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Domino’s Pizza is one of several restaurant chains alleged to have misclassified workers as managers to avoid paying overtime, according to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

About five years ago, most of Minneapolis’ Subway, Little Caesars and McDonald’s franchise restaurants did not comply with city wage standards. Now workers at each of the locations that violated the law receive the required minimum wage and time off when they’re sick.

This is all thanks to a co-enforcement program, where the city’s labor enforcement agency works with community organizations to ensure workers are aware of their rights and have the tools to advocate for themselves. Last year, it reached more than 12,000 workers and provided training on worker rights for more than 400 people. Since the program began in 2018, it has recovered more than $3 million in unpaid wages.

“Pretty consistently, since we started, we have received a disproportionate number of complaints or reports of violation from restaurant workers,” said Brian Walsh, director of labor standards and contract compliance at the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, pointing out that the restaurant industry historically has had the majority of its workers at, or barely above, the minimum wage. “… It’s kind of the front lines where some of these municipal labor standards are the rubber hitting the road if you will.”

Wage theft, which can include not paying workers minimum wage, misclassifying workers as independent contractors or as management to avoid paying overtime and taking tips meant for employees, is a $50 billion problem for U.S. workers. It is committed by large corporations, small businesses and even state governments, and it disproportionately affects low income workers, including women and workers of color.

Funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, the federal government’s response to the economic and health ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowed more states and cities to experiment with using community groups to connect with workers as Minneapolis did, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School. When labor enforcement agencies, which the average worker may not be aware of, work more closely with community organizations that connect with those workers, workers get better results, experts say.

Now that most of the ARPA funds have been appropriated, some policy advocates are pushing for states to continue this work, by making employers, rather than the public, shoulder the burden for the cost of enforcement and for the U.S. Department of Labor to support it through grants, among other funding options.

“If there are workers in a worksite who the employer knows … know their rights and that they’re ready to stand up for themselves, it makes the employer less likely to try to do things intentionally to steal wages so that then becomes like prevention,” said Veronica Mendez Moore, co-director of Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL), a worker-led organization in Minneapolis focusing on racial, gender, and economic justice. “We’ve seen that in multiple instances where? once workers stand up about one thing, the employer sort of shies away from the other.”

Walsh regularly meets with Mendez Moore’s group as well as New Justice Project MN, a Black-led organizing center focusing on economic issues, and ROC Minnesota, a labor advocacy nonprofit to discuss new developments, such as the wage theft trends they see emerging.

He said a closer relationship with these groups has helped strengthen enforcement.

“[There are] roughly 300,000 employees across the entire city and then three investigators,” he said. “That’s a really hard, almost impossible task, to be all places, all the time.”

Walsh said the total amount of ARPA funding allocated for the program is $750,000.

ARPA funds to the rescue

“The American Rescue Plan [Act] funds provided some more opportunities for that experimentation,” said Rachel Deutsch, campaign director at the California Coalition for Worker Power and one of the co-authors of the EPI/Harvard report. “There’s now this question of ‘Are we going to just abandon that infrastructure because we’re acting like COVID has ended or are we going to build on it to create mechanisms that really are needed whether or not we’re in an emergency response moment in order to inform low-wage workers of their rights and inform employers of their obligations?’ ”

The report highlighted efforts in several cities and states.

In 2021, Maine started a program with $1 million in ARPA funds for job training, help accessing unemployment benefits, and worker outreach with the support of community organizations, the AFL-CIO, and a legal aid group, according to the EPI report. In Seattle, the city’s Office of Labor Standards staff have monthly and quarterly meetings with community-based organizations. Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco also have close partnerships with community organizations as do San Diego and Santa Clara counties in California.

In Iowa, the cities of Coralville, North Liberty, and Iowa City and Johnson County allocated $322,000 in ARPA funds over five years to the Center for Worker Justice in Eastern Iowa, which investigates wage theft cases and helps put community pressure on employers to pay their employees, and has assisted workers in recovering lost wages.

The help is needed because Iowa Workforce Development doesn’t have enough staff. Jesse Dougherty, the agency’s marketing and communications officer, told States Newsroom in an email that the Workforce Development Division has four positions to investigate unpaid wages. Two of those positions were vacant for part of the past year, Dougherty said. Overall about 15 to 20 people work on wage or misclassification issues on a regular basis.

Mazahir Salih, who until recently was the executive director at the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, told States Newsroom that workers don’t always know how to file a complaint or that there is a labor enforcement entity they could file it with. They come to CWJ through word of mouth, she said. On this particular day, she was coordinating with organizers of a protest aimed at recovering the wages for a former worker at a local Mexican restaurant. He’d learned his employer couldn’t cover his paychecks only after he’d tried to deposit them at his bank.

Sometimes CWJ can work things out with the employer on the phone but if they can’t, then the group sends a letter, and from there it can ramp up community pressure, including protests and a delegation of elected officials.

“If it’s really miscommunication, we can figure it out on that phone call,” Salih said. “But some of them, either they don’t want to talk to us over the phone or they don’t want to give us any information.”

Deutsch said she would like to see more states in the South and Southwest adopt these approaches to enforce labor protections and prevent labor violations. She said that historically, these programs have started in cities with their own wage standards. One barrier could be preemption laws that have been used by state governments to prevent cities from increasing worker pay and protections beyond the state minimum wage. Many of the minimum wage preemption laws are concentrated in southern states.

Community-based organizations also need the proper financial support to dedicate time and resources to working with labor enforcement agencies. Funding issues could be resolved by dedicating revenue streams to labor standards enforcement and making employers pay for the costs through the penalties they pay for violating labor law, according to the report. Deutsch said that if philanthropic funding supports a pilot program and that program is successful, it can also make the case for more public funding of these partnerships. She added that she’s hopeful the Department of Labor will also use its granting power to support these models.

“As a society, we really systematically underfund the agencies that are supposed to enforce our workplace laws,” Deutsch said. “You’ll hear about recent anxieties about shoplifting or whatever and wage theft has always dwarfed retail burglaries and all of those things. It is a crisis and we just don’t fund it as such.”

The scope of the problem

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires workers be paid at least the federal minimum wage and overtime for any hours worked over 40 hours, but it’s a law that is often flouted. Last year, the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor recovered back wages for workers in 13,122 labor violation cases in high-violation and low-wage industries. The industries that saw the largest number of workers affected were food service, construction and retail.

Low-wage workers in the 10 most populous states in the U.S. said they were paid less than the minimum wage, which means they lost $8 billion a year, according to a 2017 study. While a National Employment Law Project in 2019 found that $9.27 billion was stolen from workers who earned less than $13 an hour.
More recently, a January report from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that companies routinely deny workers overtime pay by labeling them managers even though the majority of the work they do is not managerial. Among the companies they singled out were restaurant chains Bojangles, Sonic, Arby’s, and Domino’s as well as businesses such as H&R Block, Spirit Halloween and 84Lumber. The report prompted Democratic U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to send a letter to companies identified in the report asking them to answer questions regarding their overtime practices, as reported by the Washington Post.

The review panel’s next review of child deaths in Kentucky comes out in February 2025. The 2024 report showed children 4 years old and younger were the most at risk for overdose. The panel also found “a significant increase” in firearm injuries in children, the Lantern previously reported. (Getty Images)

FRANKFORT – Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services Secretary Eric Friedlander is “cautiously optimistic” as caseload-carrying social workers in the Department for Community Based Services increased this year.?

In December, Kentucky had 965 workers in adult and child protective services work, which increased to 1,023 in March and 1,042 in May.?

This increase comes as the cabinet is focused on retention, Friedlander and DCBS Acting Commissioner Lesa Dennis told the Interim Joint Budget Review Subcommittee on Health and Human Services Wednesday.?

From 2017 to last summer, Friedlander told legislators, the cabinet lost social workers every month.?

Social workers undergo many challenges, Dennis and Friedlander told the committee. Those include experiencing vicarious trauma, secondary post traumatic stress and going into high-risk situations.?

Recent retention efforts include a $5 per hour pay premium for those responding to abuse and other crises after hours.?

“This is an opportunity to recognize that work and support it differently for after hours, weekends and holiday work,” Dennis said.?

Also new is discretionary leave for those who’ve undergone trauma at work. Friendlander gave the example of a social worker who had a gun put to their head on a call.?

“Our response at that point, because we didn’t have this leave, was like, ‘Sorry about that. Come back to work.’ That doesn’t help with staff retention at all,” he said. “Being able to acknowledge that trauma that folks see out there, and giving them some time to breathe is really important.”?

In July, state workers will see a 6% raise in pay. Before December 2021, Friendlander said, an entry level social worker made about $34,000 annually. That figure is now closer to $51,000.?

“We had folks serving in important positions that were eligible for our services,” he said. “And really, that shouldn’t be. And so we’re working hard to get folks out of that range of salaries. It’s ongoing work.”?

During the 2023 legislative session, Senate Bill 229 passed and was signed by Gov. Andy Beshear. It’s aimed at closing gaps in Kentucky’s child abuse reporting system, including allowing DCBS discretion to make unannounced home visits when abuse is alleged.?

Kentucky reported a decrease in child victims of abuse and neglect in 2021. Even with the improvement, there were still nearly 15,000 child victims. That’s down from 2020 (16,748), 2019 (20,130) and 2018 (23,752).

If you suspect child abuse, you can call Kentucky’s Child Abuse Hotline at 877-597-2331 or report online at https://prdweb.chfs.ky.gov/ReportAbuse/ between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time between Monday through Friday.?

The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge spans the Ohio River connecting Covington and Cincinnati. (City of Covington photo via LINK nky.)

The city of Covington has attributed its recent budget shortfalls to rising work-from-home policies.?

Covington’s finance director Steve Webb disclosed during a presentation at a city commission meeting on May 23 that the city’s general fund’s expenditures had exceeded its revenue for the third quarter of the 2023 fiscal year, which ends on June 30.

The city’s finance department attributed the budget shortfall to declining payroll tax revenues following the rise of work-from-home policies at the city’s large employers. Specifically, they cited Fidelity Investments, which employs nearly 5,500 people at its office in Covington.

“We fall off the pace due to the implications of remote work situation with our largest employers,” said Webb at last week’s meeting. “As remote work has become normalized, these employers are now withholding and remitting portions of the occupational license tax to the jurisdictions where their employees are physically working.”

This shortfall did not occur in other sections of the city’s budget, most of which were funds used for special projects and programs. Much of the money for those other funds come from grants and other monetary sources unrelated to local tax collection.

Payroll tax has historically been a large chunk of Covington’s revenue and has accounted for 45% of the general fund’s revenue for the 2023 fiscal year thus far.?

For the 2022 fiscal year ending on June 30, 2022, payroll taxes and similar licensing fees accounted for about two-thirds of the fund’s revenue.?

This is not the first time the general fund has experienced a deficit. Expenditures have exceeded revenues for the two preceding quarters of the fiscal year.

The fund was also in deficit at the end of the last fiscal year and the end of the 2017 fiscal year, according to annual comprehensive financial reports from the city.?

A spokesperson from Fidelity confirmed that the company changed its tax withholding policy late last year to collect taxes for the locality where employees are scheduled to work.?

“Payroll taxes are deducted based on an associate’s scheduled location of work and designated for that geographic location accordingly,” the Fidelity spokesperson said. “As working trends continue to evolve, we will continue to assess this situation to ensure we and our associates are meeting our tax obligations accurately.”

Like many businesses, Fidelity changed its labor policies at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to allow employees to work from home.?

In spring 2020, management sent all but essential workers home to abide by shelter-in-place orders. Sources from within Fidelity indicate that the company had about 3,000 Covington employees at that time.?

Workers were allowed to return to the office voluntarily in 2022. Today employees operate on a hybrid work arrangement with five required in-office days per month. Otherwise, employees are free to work from home, an arrangement many employees still take advantage of, several employees said.?

The largest expense for Covington’s general fund since 2017 has been public safety costs, including salaries and benefits for firefighters and police, and has consistently taken up about 60% of the general fund’s expenditures.

Webb did not mention work-from-home policies in his presentation to the board in February.?

The comprehensive report for the 2022 fiscal year suggested that payroll tax collections were up.?

“Revenue from the payroll tax was far ahead of schedule as of October,” said the finance department in an email. “In fact, it was running on a pace to finish the fiscal year some $2.5 million ahead of projections.”

By the end of the calendar year, the email went on to say, growth had tapered off. By January, the city had noticed that payroll tax receipts had “dropped below the budgeted pace.”

St. Elizabeth, another large regional employer, spoke with LINK nky about their work arrangements and confirmed a hybrid work arrangement for many of its employees as well. St. Elizabeth’s Covington employee count is considerably smaller than Fidelity’s; however, employing only about 150 people in Covington. Other large employers in the city did not respond to calls to comment.?

The City Commission will take up the issue of next year’s budget at a special meeting this Saturday, June 3, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Covington City Hall on Pike Street. The meeting is open to the public.

This article is republished from LINK nky.

Supporters of House Bill 367 say losing food assistance would encourage able-bodied adults to get a job. Opponents say the bill would harm local economies, increase administrative burdens on school lunch programs and disqualify people for having even small savings. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Congressional Republicans’ efforts to slash federal spending by tying work requirements to Medicaid and SNAP would have far-reaching consequences for people with mental health issues, chronic health problems, and some people with disabilities if enacted, policy experts on anti-poverty programs say.

They say the work requirements as laid out by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s “Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023” — the Republican plan to raise the country’s debt ceiling —? would be devastating for many Americans and hard for states to implement, especially in the thick of the pandemic public health emergency ending. The bill narrowly passed the House in April, 217 to 211 with four Republicans joining Democrats in voting against it. If a deal isn’t reached, the U.S. will default on its debt as early as June 1.?

Democrats have pushed back on the work requirements, but McCarthy has said they are non-negotiable. Reports that Biden is showing some flexibility on the issue have upset some Democrats. The House Freedom Caucus has also pushed for McCarthy to stop the discussions with the White House until the Senate passes the bill.

Ten million Medicaid expansion enrollees are at risk under the bill, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The Health and Human Services Department estimated that 21 million people are vulnerable to the work reporting requirements. The Congressional Budget Office found that 1.5 million people would lose coverage and 600,000 would become uninsured. It’s possible that the CBO could be underestimating how many people would lose their coverage, some experts say. Although the requirements apply to every state, the CBPP explained in its analysis of the bill that “it would heavily impact people covered by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion.”

“People with mental health issues, people with substance use disorders, people with chronic health conditions and even forms of disability could be encompassed within the expansion population and would need to navigate an entirely new system that’s really not well-specified in the bill to get an exemption and we know that that sets up a massive coverage loss potential,” Allison Orris, senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, told States Newsroom.

The bill includes work-reporting requirements for Medicaid that are even more severe than a 2018 Arkansas law that has since been blocked by the courts, said Edwin Park, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy. Unlike other work requirement proposals, the bill would not exempt people during their pregnancy and into their postpartum period and there isn’t an automatic exemption for people receiving Supplemental Security Income because they have a disability or Social Security Disability Insurance. It would undercut gains made by Medicaid expansion because even people eligible could lose coverage because of the complexity of the “red tape” they would be forced to navigate, Park said. The unwinding of pandemic policies adds to the potential complications.

“You have all the coverage losses where some people are going to be inappropriately disenrolled, particularly for procedural reasons. They won’t return in the mail. They never got their renewal packet. … And then you have on top of that, this onerous work-reporting requirement with red tape and because states are so overwhelmed with unwinding over the next year or so, it’s hard to see how they could implement a work-reporting requirement that implements the exemptions,” he said.

Park added that House Republicans who characterize this provision of the bill, which requires recipients to work 80 hours per month, do community service or be involved in an employment program, as only affecting able-bodied adults without children is inaccurate.

“… Based on how this proposal has been designed, you know, it’s not targeted to that group at all,” he said.

He explained, “We know that many people who are disabled who are receiving disability benefits do work to a limited extent and they aren’t necessarily unfit for employment. There’s limits on how much they can work to maintain their benefits. But federal policy, up to this point, has been encouraging those with disabilities to work to increase their employment hours while being able to maintain their health coverage.”

Expanding SNAP work requirements

The SNAP work requirements are equally concerning to advocates. Currently 18- to 49-year-olds without children at home can only receive benefits for three months in any three-year-period unless they prove they’ve worked a 20-hour week. Under McCarthy’s bill, those work requirements would be expanded to include people up to age 55.?

Craig Gundersen, an economics professor at Baylor University whose research focuses on food insecurity and food assistance, said it may look like that the work requirements are successful because cases will fall, but the reality will be different.

“What’s going to happen is if you impose work requirements you’re going to have an increase in food insecurity in our country,” he said.

He said the bill’s provision on SNAP doesn’t make sense.?

“SNAP doesn’t discourage work. So why would you want to impose work requirements? The second thing is that SNAP is an anti-hunger program full stop,” he said. “That’s what it was designed to do. If that’s its main goal, why would we ever want to say to people that you have to work to get these benefits.”

Nine-hundred thousand people in the U.S. aged 50 to 55 are at risk of losing SNAP, according to CBPP.

The SNAP restrictions also make it harder for states to provide support for SNAP recipients dealing with unique circumstances that would exempt them from the three-month time limit to receive benefits. The number of exemptions states can use are currently tied to their caseloads and if they aren’t used, states can roll them over into the next year. McCarthy’s bill wouldn’t let states carry over unused exemptions.?

??Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) would also be affected by the stricter work requirements in the House debt ceiling legislation. Families subject to work requirements — 540,000 families — could potentially lose their cash benefits, the CBPP estimated, worsening child poverty.

Housing assistance, student loan forgiveness targeted

In addition to these effects on anti-poverty programs, many other services and benefits in housing and education would likely suffer from the huge cuts proposed in the bill. The CBPP’s analysis of this bill shows average cuts of 13% in 2024 even if cuts were evenly spread across discretionary programs.

The legislation would also kill Biden’s student loan forgiveness plans regardless of the outcome in the courts and nix student loan repayment plans that were designed to be more affordable for people with student debt. It would “likely eliminate Pell Grants altogether for 80,000 students,” according to the Department of Education.

“Here you are cutting one of the premier programs that serves low-income students who are trying to access this level of education, who have long been marginalized in the labor market,” said Katherine Gallagher Robbins, senior fellow at the National Partnership for Women & Families. “And what you’re saying to them is, ‘Oh, hey, by the way, we’re not even going to give you the support that will pay dividends for years to come in your own earnings.”

Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge has estimated that nearly 1 million people could lose housing assistance and that nearly 120,000 people may be cut off from homelessness services.

“Stable housing is such an essential part of any family’s economic security,” Gallagher Robbins said. “ … The cuts that they’re talking about here …, you’re going to end up eliminating almost 300,000 families’ support for their housing. Not all of those families will end up being unhoused, but some of them will. It creates this downward spiral that is very challenging to recover from, especially as other benefits are cut …”

The ending of the pandemic public health emergency has already resulted in the loss of financial support for some families, and now with these potential cuts, the people who benefited most from the recovery would be hurt the most from this bill, Gallagher Robbins said.?

“We’re already seeing things like less access to school lunch, less access to the child tax credit,” she said. “So families are already struggling with what that looks like and that has been mitigated to an extent, obviously not fully, by the current strength of the economy. Everything is up for grabs here, basically, in terms of harming families who are already absorbing this most recent kind of cut in support.”

Ironworker apprentice Natalie Bell displays her Rosie the Riveter tattoo that she describes as a symbol of strength March 22 at the Iron Workers 172 Training Center in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for States Newsroom)

Natalie Bell was thinking about a career in art after college when a welding class and a delivery of four pizzas changed her career trajectory.?

“I was taking a delivery out to a construction site and I met an ironworker who I was taking the delivery to,” said Bell, who lives in Columbus, Ohio. “I asked him, I said, ‘Hey, are you looking for apprentices? I don’t want to do college anymore, but I’m a welder.’ He said, ‘Yeah,’ and he gave me the number to the ironworkers union.”

Bell, now 23, said she was worried at first about being accepted.

“I took my interview and I was so scared because I was like, ‘They’re not going to accept me. I’m a woman trying to do construction.’ I didn’t know how things worked at all,” she said.

Bell, who entered the industry in 2019, said working in construction has its challenges but the money provides her with a decent lifestyle and good health insurance.?

“I live very comfortably … I’m going to Iceland in July just because I can,” she said. “I can go do that. I can take a vacation every year. I don’t have to worry about medical bills because I have phenomenal insurance.”

The Biden administration is counting on more women like Bell seeing the value of jobs in the construction industry. Over the next decade, the administration wants to add a million more women in construction jobs to aid in infrastructure projects across the country, including its effort to increase semiconductor manufacturing. The success of that effort will depend on the federal policies now being put in place and changes to an industry that’s not known for being welcoming to women.?

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 1.2 million women were employed in construction in 2020, and a University of Michigan analysis of the data found that women have gained jobs “at three times their share of the industry,” since the beginning of the pandemic.

Women were slowly but surely entering more male-dominated occupations before the pandemic, said Betsey Stevenson, an economist and professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan who did the analysis with Benny Docter, a senior data and policy analyst at the university. Women lost jobs in education and in the service industry during the pandemic and as they returned to work many shifted to new occupations that reflect changing market conditions, according to their analysis.

“I think that the important takeaway is that women can be an important source of labor for the construction industry,” Stevenson said in an email. “While child care is important for women, it is equally important to note that construction as an industry risks losing more male workers due to childcare conflicts. The childcare requirements in the CHIPS Act is there to help ensure a sufficient workforce is able to take on the work that is being funded.”

The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden last year, aims to increase the country’s production of chips which are seen as essential for the military and for the economy because of their use in autos and all manner of electronics. The bill provides roughly $40 billion to build or expand plants, and already Intel is building a megaproject near Columbus, Ohio. But to receive federal subsidies the law requires companies to ensure that the workers they hire, including construction workers building the plants, have access to affordable and high-quality child care.?

Finding affordable, quality child care is an issue for many parents, but it can be even more of a struggle for construction workers because daycares typically open after they are already supposed to be at work. That can be particularly hard on single parents. Grecia Palomar, a 29-year-old single mother of two in Little Canada, Minnesota, spent seven years hanging drywall at Reshetar Systems, a commercial drywall and carpentry business, before leaving to become a drywall instructor for Finishing Trades Institute of the Upper Midwest. Palomar said she was only able to manage when her children were younger because her employer allowed her to arrive later and work later.?

Palomar said that even though she had grown up around job sites because her father worked in construction, she hadn’t considered it as a potential career until she moved back to Minnesota from Illinois with two young children to support. With one child in need of occupational and speech therapies, Palomar said she needed to make more than the $8 an hour she had earned as a preschool teacher. Her father suggested construction. She made $13 an hour when she started in the industry, and now makes $40 an hour.

Who is turning to construction careers?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics survey doesn’t explain the employment background of women newly entering construction, but several people working in the construction industry said they have seen women coming from what are considered service jobs.?

Mary Ann Naylor, communications and marketing director for Oregon Tradeswomen, an apprenticeship-readiness program in Portland, said that the women seeking out the program often come from retail, hospitality, restaurants and childcare, which often pays low wages and offers few benefits. She added that since the pandemic, she has seen more unemployed people and people leaving healthcare jobs to look into the skilled construction trades.

Some of the advantages of construction that appeal to new workers are paid training and lack of student debt. Joy Merryman, a plumber and pipefitter who lives in Pickerington, Ohio, and works in Columbus, said she enjoys knowing that her labor will benefit the community, including her work on recreation centers. And she’s so happy with her career choice that she now does outreach — planning events, job fairs and school visits — for the Central Ohio Women in the Trades.

John Burcaw, director of academic education and CEO of the Finishing Trades Institute of the Upper Midwest in Little Canada, Minnesota, said he’s seen workers come from similar employment backgrounds as Naylor mentioned. He said that there are also more opportunities for people starting a career in construction to possibly become project managers, estimators, entrepreneurs, educators, or labor leaders than when he began doing this work 33 years ago.

Harassment still a problem

But there are still challenges with both recruitment and retainment of women in construction.?

Women’s experiences often depend on the kind of support they have inside and outside the job, such as unions, women’s trade groups and foremen who push back against gender-based discrimination.?

In addition to the child care needs, work sites can still be rife with sexual harassment. All of the women working construction interviewed by States Newsroom said they have faced some kind of sexual harassment on the job, whether it was inappropriate comments on their appearance, nonconsensual touching, or “jokes that go too far.”?

Bell, the welder, said she has walked off jobs and once filed a complaint over sexual harassment, but has also had experiences where she has talked for foremen and had problems taken care of.

“I’ve been touched on the job site without consent. I’ve been yelled at in my face. I’ve been told I don’t belong there. I’ve been belittled, and I’m a minority so I’ve been made fun of or talked down to in that sense,” Palomar said. “But I had an awesome contractor who always had my back and if I didn’t feel safe somewhere, I could just call them and they would be there for me and I think that helped me get through that. Without their support and their trust and my union backing me up, I don’t think I would have been able to have the patience and the determination to stay there because it is overwhelming.”

Merryman, 37, who has worked in construction for 10 years in Ohio, said having supportive people around you helps, and that it’s easy to understand why women without that advantage end up leaving construction.?

“I think a big part of the issue with retaining people is you start to feel very alienated, you feel very alone and you question yourself,” she said. “Am I crazy for being grossed out by what that dude just said to me? Am I crazy for not wanting to have to listen to what he thinks about my body while I’m at work?”

There are educational efforts to make the workplace more welcoming to women, Burcaw said. The Finishing Trades Institute of the Upper Midwest is starting a program in the fall that advises men on how to be good allies to women in construction when they face gender-based harassment and discrimination.

Addressing the federal government’s ambitious goal to add one million more women in construction jobs at a Tradeswomen Build Nations conference last fall, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she had heard from women about the challenges they faced on sites. She then added, “Women don’t want to deal with the BS. They just want to do their jobs.”

Sharita Gruberg, vice president for economic justice at the National Partnership for Women and Families, said there will need to be sufficient monitoring and enforcement from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to ensure that underrepresented workers aren’t being pushed out of jobs due to sexual harassment and discrimination.?

“Because of these other barriers, it is in all of our interests to make sure that these investments are supporting good jobs, safe jobs, because we’re just not going to have the workforce that we need to translate these investments into successful outcomes without also prioritizing equal opportunity enforcement and making sure that women are safe and in these roles,” Gruberg said.

This month, the Department of Labor also announced it was launching an initiative “to promote equal opportunity by federal contractors in the construction trades on large federally funded projects.” The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs is going to work with the General Services Administration and the Department of Transportation to make sure contractors and subcontractors receive no-cost help to improve recruitment and hiring practices to ensure more women and other underrepresented workers are able to join the construction industry.

The initiative is connected to the OFCCP’s Mega Construction Project Program that rewards projects expected to last for one year and make a positive economic difference in communities. Gruberg said some of the construction work on semiconductor facilities and highways and transportation could qualify.

“One exciting thing about the Mega projects are that there are 16 affirmative action steps that are part of these projects to really make sure that on the front end, companies are supported in how they can comply with the equal opportunity requirements of these investments,” Gruberg said. “So making sure that they are increasing representation of qualified workers from underrepresented groups in the construction trades, which includes women.”

Entrance sign to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. (Photo by Getty Images)

A state legislative panel unanimously approved a bill Thursday that would allow the Kentucky Horse Park to exclude its new hires from the state merit system designed to protect employees from political influence and enable the park to share in the “bedroom tax” collected by hotels, motels and other providers of overnight lodging in Fayette and Scott counties.

With no debate, the House Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Committee approved House Bill 39 on a 14-0 vote and sent it to the full House for its consideration.? The House may vote on it Tuesday.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Phil Pratt, R-Georgetown, told the panel its purpose is to make the 1,200-acre park in northern Fayette County off KY 1973 (Iron Works Pike) and Interstate 75 more competitive with other horse arenas in the country.

Alston Kerr, chair of the Kentucky Horse Park Commission, said the attempt is to make the park “100 percent more efficient.”

Lee Carter, the park’s director, said he was “very pleased” with the committee’s action on HB 39.

He noted that the committee voted on a substitute of the original bill.

Changes in the substitute, he said, included membership on the park commission.

Membership of the Kentucky Horse Park commission would increase under the proposed legislation. The commission now has 13 members appointed by the governor along with the secretaries of the tourism and economic development cabinets.

Under the legislation, the number of appointments by the governor would drop to 12 and the finance secretary would replace the economic development secretary.

Also added to the commission would be the state agriculture commissioner and the dean of the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture. The committee substitute replaced the tourism directors from Lexington and Georgetown with the mayors and county judge-executives.

The bill also would require the park to report to the House panel every year by Nov. 1 and remove language dealing with revenue bonds and the state code to procure various equipment.

The most controversial provision in the bill — excluding new hires from the merit system — would not affect the 55 to 60 merit employees at the park.? They would stay in the merit system but new hires would not.

Dave Smith, head of the Kentucky Association of State Employees, said after the committee meeting that without the merit system new hires at the park could be fired any time for any reason.

“We will keep on fighting this. It’s not a done deal yet,” said Smith.

The merit system emphasizes making personnel decisions (hiring, promoting, assigning work and other matters) based on an individual’s qualifications and performance. It also protects state employees against arbitrary actions and discriminatory practices. Politics is not to be involved.

Political appointees, like cabinet secretaries and other managers, are non-merit.? They generally serve at the pleasure of the governor.

Carter, the Horse Park’s director, said excluding new employees from the merit system would provide “more flexibility” in staffing.

The bill also would enable the Horse Park to share in proceeds from the transient or “bedroom” tax collected in Fayette and Scott counties.

Fayette County has a 9.5% transient or bedroom tax. Of that, 1% goes to the state for tourism efforts, 4% goes to VisitLex and the rest to retire debt.

For every percentage point, the tax generates about $2 million.? That means VisitLex gets about $8 million a year from the tax to promote tourism efforts.