Equitable Social Work Salaries

The issue of social work salaries is a major priority, reflecting a longstanding concern for professional social workers serving in Oklahoma. NASW members are urged to join this campaign to make equitable professional salaries a public issue in Oklahoma and beyond. Read the statement below and sign-on now.
Together, we will push this issue forward with employers, boards of directors, government officials and policy makers, foundations, Tribes, and labor unions.
What We Believe about the Value and Worth of Professional Social Workers
Social workers deserve pay commensurate with their major contributions to social programs, based on their education, experience and the effectiveness of the profession. Given the intrinsic value of people’s lives and the value social workers bring to service delivery, social workers must be paid fair and appropriate salaries.
Capturing over 100 years of accumulated practice wisdom, social workers receive the world’s best advanced professional education that prepares them to intervene in the most intractable social problems, using evidence based and culturally relevant knowledge and practice, theory, methods, and advocacy at all levels.
Professional social workers serve people from every sector struggling with life’s greatest challenges. We help individuals, families, groups and communities identify and develop capacities, resources and opportunities in the face of such difficulties as illness, addictions, childhood abuse, poverty, underemployment, inadequate housing, death and bereavement, trauma, and sudden shifts in life’s circumstances.
Our interventions range from direct clinical services, which assist people in navigating the myriad social systems that impinge on their lives, based on assessments that identify critical areas where change is likely to occur, to advocacy and social justice at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. The results frequently prevent more acute need for services and can positively alter the course of people’s lives. Under many circumstances, this provides cost effective programs and services.
The Impact of Inequitable Salaries
Social workers report significant challenges in meeting the cost of living in Oklahoma (especially in rural areas), while facing one of the highest debt to salary ratios of any profession in public service, given the amount of loans required to obtain an education and costs of obtaining and retaining licensure. Social workers are generally one of the lowest paid professions providing services to the public, despite paying the same tuition for graduate education as higher paid professions. The repayment of student loans alone can be financially devastating. Social workers are frequently paid lower than comparable professions within the same institution, including professions that require less education.
The impact of inequitable salaries includes the necessity of leaving one’s job for alternative opportunities both in and out of social work while many social workers have little choice but to persevere in economically difficult circumstances. Not surprisingly, many social workers report the necessity to work in more than one job.
What is Required at Every Stage of a Social Workers’ Career
Fair and appropriate salaries are required for social workers at every stage of their career, and this needs to be reflected at the entry level, in the provision of steps based on experience and the attainment of specialized knowledge and skill, and changes in the cost of living.
Immediate and Long Term Implications
On a larger policy level, we must also recognize that the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the need for social workers to greatly expand by as much as 24%, depending on the service area. This includes the need for more social workers to work with our aging population, the need for more bi-lingual, bi-cultural social workers, Native American social workers, and the increasing demand for professional social workers because of the federal healthcare issues and mental health parity.
Without fair and equitable salaries, many current and future social work professionals will forgo careers in this field. The challenge is both immediate and long term.
The Goals of the Campaign
We recognize the economic underpinnings of social work salaries are often limited by the funding that employers receive for the provision of services. In addition, NASW is not a labor union and is not permitted by law to call a strike or a boycott. Nevertheless, we must not be silenced by these circumstances but should see this as a challenge to be addressed.
The first step in this effort is to build a ground swell of support among social workers to assure that fair and equitable salaries is a priority for the social work profession through a sign-on campaign. Being united as a profession is key to the sustained effort required to bring about change.
What we are calling for is that employers of social workers, along with those who are invo...