“Everybody’s working for the weekend
Everybody wants a new romance
Everybody’s goin’ off the deep end
Everybody needs a second chance”
“Working for the Weekend” — Loverboy

Released in September of 1981 as the lead single for Loverboy’s second studio album, Get Lucky, “Working for the Weekend” became one of the most iconic songs by the group - and of the decade. In fact, VH1 ranked the song among its top 100 songs of the 1980s.

The song really launched Loverboy from a band that was playing bars and clubs at the time to one of the prime “stadium rock” bands in the 1980s, later releasing singles “Lovin’ Every Minute of It,” “Heaven in Your Eyes,” and “Hot Girls in Love” that each became staples of shows that the group still performs live today.

The Canadian band parlayed its success from this single to a contract to record the theme song for the 1984 Summer Olympics.

This single came to be when Loverboy guitarist Paul Dean took a walk midday after a late-night gig. He noticed that all the “hang out” spots were empty, then realized it was because those who would likely be at clubs and bars were “waiting for the weekend.” The group’s lead vocalist, Mike Reno suggested to focus the lyrics on working rather than passively waiting, and the song was born, really launching the group’s career.

Many businesses in the country - and locally - are struggling to find employees. There are a lot of reasons for that, but those who like to bellow the worst-case scenarios of fellow humans frequently explain that younger generations simply “don’t want to work” and would rather apply for “free money” from the federal and state government without having to put forth any effort to contribute to society.

Let’s put a pin in that for just a second and consider that the largest population group in our country, Baby Boomers, is the term used to describe a high birth rate after World War II and lasting into the mid-1960s, with the defined years by historians and economists being those who were born from 1946-1964.

Read those dates again.

Our largest population group - by far - in the country, is aged 60-78 now. Baby boomers left jobs in droves during the pandemic, finding that an excellent opportunity to head off into retirement.

One recent study found that the population listing their employment status as “retired” now makes up as much as 48% of the population among South Dakota’s 20 largest cities.

Economists will tell you that in a rural, agricultural-based economy, an unemployment rate of 3% can be viable, but getting below that is going to lead to jobs remaining open for long periods of time and workers hopping quickly from one job to another due to better pay or benefits attracting limited persons with skills necessary for a position. More industrial and urban centers are at their best with an unemployment rate of around 4.5%.

South Dakota’s statewide unemployment rate is currently 2%.

The simple truth is that the reason South Dakota employers are struggling to find workers has nothing to do with a lack of desire to work. As a matter of fact, South Dakota has ranked either No. 1 or 2 in the highest percentage of workers who have multiple jobs for more than a decade now, with the state’s most recent number of 10.3% of its workers holding multiple jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is more than twice the nation-wide rate of 5%.

That long preface brings us to today’s ballot measure, the proposed South Dakota Constitutional Amendment F on the November ballot in the state.

This will be the fourth ballot measure covered in this space for the November election, following examinations of proposed Initiated Measure 28, Constitutional Amendment E, and Constitutional Amendment H.

Amendment F was a referred amendment by the state legislature that would amend Article XXI, Section 10 of the South Dakota Constitution to allow the state to apply work requirements to Medicaid recipients who are not diagnosed with a mental or physical disability.

This sounds perfectly logical, but why is it that the legislature couldn’t simply pass this law and make it effective the following July 1?

Quite simply, it’s because members in Pierre were following party rather than their constituents. In multiple opportunities to do so, the state legislature declined to expand Medicaid, becoming one of the final states that had not done so.

Voters put the issue onto the ballot as a Constitutional Amendment, and in 2022, that Amendment was approved by voters with 56.2% support.

That means any adjustment now to Medicaid within the state requires more than a simple bill passed by the legislature. It requires an amendment to the state’s constitution, but really, legislators have themselves to blame for that.

The typical folks that you’d expect are behind their respective sides on this amendment, with Republican legislative leaders backing the measure and Democrat legislators against it.

Right now, one state in the entire country has legal work requirements as part of the Medicaid program. Multiple states put forth work requirements, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) withdrew all state work requirements due to the terminology involved at the state level. Georgia has since altered its wording to allow its work requirement to be the only active work requirement in the country on the Medicaid program.

Even if this amendment is approved, it is feasible that CMS would nullify it as any additional requirements on Medicaid must be approved by CMS.

The biggest issue in reviewing the work requirement is defining the phrase, “diagnosed as being physically or mentally disabled.”

What is exactly disabled?

Working in mental health for roughly a decade, I worked with multiple clients who had a Severe and Persistent Mental Illness (SPMI) diagnosis and went years and multiple attempts before being approved for Social Security Disability Income (SSDI).

In many cases, those clients wanted nothing more than to work as much as they could mentally handle, but what they could handle was not full-time work - yet it took multiple years and the help of a mental health agency assisting them to finally get them on disability assistance - and they had a legitimate mental disability that was diagnosed by a medical professional.

How long will it take for someone who is legitimately disabled to be able to access Medicaid without going through a work requirement?

The language within the proposed amendment doesn’t specify that it’s diagnosed by a medical professional, diagnosed and approved through CMS, or where exactly an accepted diagnosis will be accepted from.

The issue with not getting Medicaid expanded as the majority of the state actually wanted by those in Pierre now means that the only way we can adjust Medicaid in the state is through a constitutional amendment, meaning the wording has to be spot-on when it’s passed.

While the idea of a work requirement in and of itself isn’t a horrible thing, the vague-ness of how this is put together is an issue to add to the State Constitution.

Everybody needs a second chance, as the song says, and voters really should send this one back to the legislature by rejecting Amendment F and suggesting more clarity in order to alter the state’s binding document.