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Just think about it
(lemmy.world)
Or save a Word doc as pdf.
I work in academia. I’m a lowly paid adjunct who teaches 8 classes across 4 schools to make ends meet.
In the lead up to this semester, each school has had a mandatory Zoom meeting to get everyone involved on the same page.
In all 4 instances, I sat there and fucking seethed watching people who make upward of 10 times what I do just endlessly fumble with the technology while saying nothing of value for 2 hours.
It’s honestly amazing just how inept the manager class is.
Calling any labor unskilled is fraternizing with the weapons of the enemy, we don't need it. Our greatest weapon is class consciousness and worker solidarity.
It never made sense to me. You spent 1 hour of your 24 hours a day doing something you would not do for fun. Your 1 hour is just as long as my 1 hour. Both of us sacrifice the same amount of free time out of our lives doing something we'd rather not do. Why should we be paid differently?
If anything, the higher ranking the job, the more it allows for chatting with colleagues, going out for lunch, taking coffee breaks. You get much more "fun time" than labor intense workers do. Shouldn't you be paid less? There is an added benefit in your job to begin with. The luxury of being able to sit and get coffee when you want to is already quite a blast tbh.
True and, the inverse is the soul crushing monotony of the minimum wage job.
I think the ones that should be compensated more are those that society really can't run without AND, are largely undesirable even with adequate compensation.
There is no such thing as unskilled work
Everytime unskilled work is mentioned, someone feels the need to comment that ackchually all work requires skill.
Unskilled work means you don't need prior experience or specific education to apply. You will be trained on the job.
Unskilled work means you don’t need prior experience or specific education to apply.
It means whatever the employers want it to mean. But anyone who has worked anywhere for a significant length of time knows the value experience brings in a role.
Whether you're packing boxes or picking fruit or doing brain surgery, the speed and accuracy of your work is predicated on experience. Not something you get through a crash course or a certificate. You have to do the work to learn the work in every field.
That's what makes "unskilled" labor a myth.
OK what do you propose we call it when there is a job that literally requires prior experience or certifications vs a job that doesn't?
Because you cannot tell me that it's OK to hire anyone and teach them brain surgery on the job.
I like the term "specialized" vs "unspecialized". It better describes what it actually means.
OK what do you propose we call it when there is a job that literally requires prior experience or certifications vs a job that doesn’t?
Any job can be regulated.
In Texas, cosmetology students must complete a minimum of 1,000 hours of instruction at an accredited beauty school to become licensed.
In Oregon, no such license is required.
Does this mean a cosmetologist's status as "skilled worker" evaporates upon stepping off a plane from Houston to Portland?
Because you cannot tell me that it’s OK to hire anyone and teach them brain surgery on the job.
That's exactly what professional hospital surgeries do. They identify candidates for hire and train them with their veteran staff.
Nobody is born knowing brain surgery. Nobody is born with a number of successful surgeries under their belts. Everyone starts from square one.
What makes brain surgery different from HVAC repair isn't skill, its liability. If you fuck up a unit then you've caused a few hundred dollars in damage. If you fuck up a brain, you kill someone.
But they both require skill and experience to do reliably and efficiently.
And framing labor this way totally disregars the time commitment. Which should be a thriving wage for any hob that requires 40hrs/week
I think the spelling in this reply actually tells the story
So installing HVAC systems is unskilled work? I didn't have any prior experience or education when I got a job doing that.
And you were able to work on your own with less than a weeks worth of OJT?
Actually it was about a week and it was other apprentices that did the majority of the training.
That sure sounds like what would qualify as "unskilled labour". It basically means that the pool of employees is every healthy adult human being and you can be nearly instantly replaced if needed.
I agree 100%. HVAC is not rocket science. As a matter of fact, I was instantly replaced after I quit. As was the guy that replaced me and so on. The point I was trying to make is that despite being viewed as a "trade", HVAC technicians lean more towards the other user's definition of unskilled labor. If it isn't clear, i think the idea of unskilled labor is bullshit.
That's not true though. I am a skilled machine operator, and I was hired with zero experience and trained on the job because there just aren't enough trained operators locally available in my industry.
How could you say that? This is landlord erasure
if only
I believe they prefer to be called "persons of land". /s
That's not work.
You're right. It goes beyond work. It's a service to humanity.
I have been in an argument with a landlord before. They were arguing that it was a real job because of all the paperwork. I was just like... bruh
Paperwork is only a job if you're a lawyer or an accountant.
Well, there's Amazon packing, where they recently sent me three cards in an A3 by 4" box. Ain't no way you could call that "skilled".
Thinking about it makes the argument really really poor. If I'm a construction worker who spent decades perfecting my skills so I get promoted to management, now I have to hire someone else to take my previous position. The whole point of paying someone to do something should be because your time is better spent doing something else. So a very skilled person SHOULD be paying someone to get coffee. So the whole concept falls apart.
This is actually correct. I will say that these higher-ups are unreasonably dumb though. I work with a lot of them. It's like they traded low IQ skills like wiping their ass with "high IQ" skills like being marketed to and going to conventions to find out how to generate synergy.
You’re missing the point. I don’t think most people have a problem saying there are different levels of skill based employment. Does designing a skyscraper take more skill than managing the lunch rush at a McDonald’s? Probably, but by saying working in fast food is an unskilled trade is propaganda to keep wages for those jobs low.
There is a definite skill for handling noon at a McDonald’s. Maybe it’s different than doing high level math for engineering but it’s not unskilled.
That’s where the issue is for most people that don’t like the punching down at “unskilled workers”
This is the same argument I have with my parents when they say that “unskilled workers” have jobs and not careers. And they use that as a justification for not paying them a living wage, “it’s not supposed to be a job forever” is usually the answer I get.
If you contribute 40 hours of labor to the country’s GDP, you should expect to be able to have shelter, food and medical care. That’s not asking a lot.
Creating a class of full time employees below that basic level is disgusting.
If you contribute 40 hours of labor to the country’s GDP, you should expect to be able to have shelter, food and medical care. That’s not asking a lot.
That's 1000% true, but that doesn't change the fact that there are jobs you can do from walking in off the street with an hour or two of training, and there are jobs that you need more training/background/skills to do.
All full time work should provide enough for a basic standard of living. But arguing that there isn't a difference in required skill between stocking shelves in an Amazon warehouse and say, diagnosing and treating cancer is absurd.
That's going to significantly undermine your argument with a lot of people.
As far as your parents go, historically a lot of those jobs were populated primarily by high school students or people trying to make some side cash, and it wasn't as hard to find employment in a more stable "career" job. The economy worked in a way where having dead end "starter" jobs still "worked".
They just probably aren't as aware of the fact that more and more people are getting stuck in those jobs due to no fault of their own. The idea is truly and utterly alien to them if they haven't had to navigate job hunting since they started their "career" job.
The idea that people who didn't make poor life choices are trying to survive off working at McDonalds doesn't mesh with their understanding of how the world works. The idea that someone working at Walmart full time can't afford to live without government assistance doesn't seem real.
The last time they had to directly deal with that sort of stuff, no one was trying to survive that way because you could much more easily move to a job you could survive on if you just put in a small amount of effort. It might have been another shitty job, but options were there if you just looked. Not too long ago you could survive off Walmart.
All you can really do is to keep insisting that times have changed. Jobs aren't just waiting for someone to ask to speak to the manager, and pay has not kept pace with costs of stuff increasing.
Trying to argue that a fry cook deserves to be paid as much as a skilled position will always be a non-starter.
historically a lot of those jobs were populated primarily by high school students
TIL McDonalds didn't used to be open during the day because the majority of its workforce was in school.
Awesome! I can put another hole in my "nitpick of minor detail that doesn't change the main point" punch card. Two more and I get a free icecream!
Nice, another person that doesn't care about accuracy of information in their arguments.
The information is accurate. Your interpretation of my wording is so off and away from the rest of the conversation it's hardly worth engaging with.
This isn't debate club, a news room, or some scientific paper. You don't "win" anything by trying to pick apart minor word choice.
I have an incredibly hard time believing you truly misunderstood the intended meaning and weren't just excited to score what you thought was some sort of easy dunk.
In the past, the type of jobs that older generations tend to categorize as "dead end jobs meant for students" had a significant chunk of their workforce made up of students. The stereotype didn't coalesce out of nowhere spontaneously and entirely out of the imagination of privileged assholes.
Feel free to keep on this track if you feel the need, but I'm done.
The stereotype didn’t coalesce out of nowhere spontaneously and entirely out of the imagination of privileged assholes.
No, it came out of propaganda, but go off on this imagined past that neither of us actually experienced.
This is based on the fallacy that people deserve to be rich because they are more skilled and work harder. In most cases this is not true. Most just use money to make more money. They don't actually produce anything useful for humanity.
You understand that is a skill in and of itself. Which is why so many day traders end up going bankrupt. To be able to actually consistently make money off of money isn't magical, it doesn't happen automatically. If it did everyone would be far wealthier.
To be able to actually consistently make money off of money isn't magical, it doesn't happen automatically
Ever heard of interest? Savings accounts?
Say you just have 100 million sitting in a bank account. The average national savings account interest rate (and you'd get a much better one with 100 million) is 0.42 APY.
So you'd get $420,000 in interest every year.
If it did everyone would be far wealthier.
No, the rich would be richer. It's expensive to make money, but very simple if you have a lot of it. Those without the capacity will keep getting poorer. You can shift the margins by taking more risks, obviously, but you can just make moneys for free when you already have enough for everything you need.
And hmm how is the trend going?
Oh, right.
Sure they increased their money during the pandemic. People were acting like idiots buying homes and goods when they really really shouldn't have. It's also true the rich prey on this. Go try to get 100 million in an interest bank account and see what happens, it's actually harder to leave that kind of money in interest accounts because of how FINRA regulations work. Your money would literally not be insured. You wouldn't know these things because you just hear other poor people talk about the rich and not the actual rich.
Thus, the real crux of the problem. The poor don't even understand well enough what's happening to make a good argument. Between the wanna be rich poor people who talk about unskilled labor as if you just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and the poor who hate the rich, no one actually understands how it all works. And it all WORKS BECAUSE you don't understand. If the poor didn't respond the way they did during the pandemic, the rich wouldn't have been able to hoover up all their money. Who's taking the 22% loans, who's buying houses they can't afford on 30+ year mortgages at 8%. All of those actions make the rich richer. You want to stop the rich? Stop wasting your money. But even if you can, the rest won't and the money will keep funneling up. Thus the real problem. But no one wants to change their life style. Instead they'll go out and buy expensive handbags and other luxury items on lay away. You can't stop the rich as long as everyone participates in capitalism.
A lot of words for saying "you're right that one can very safely invest that kind of money and thus I was wrong in saying money doesn't just generate money, when it very literally does".
"I pointed a gun at a guy and asked to fuck him in the arse and he just seemed to agree without question. That doesn't make me a rapist, it makes him a slut."
Honestly I couldn't come up with more hilarious victim blaming if I tried. 5/5 for trolling as a deeply brainwashed libertarian fucknut.
The problem is there is no safe way to invest that kind of money. If there was a purely safe way to invest everyone would be a millionaire. The savings account thing you mentioned is literally only for poor people, to give them a leg up and a small increasing investment for the purpose of teaching people the value of investment. You've created a strawman and keep smacking it.
In my experience only 20% of baristas are in fact skilled.
If 80% of the baristas were on paid leave for severe burns I don't think those companies would still be open.
Retail and hospitality workers have to have a number of skill sets just to keep from being fired day 1.
The number of people who refuse/can't work a POS system and complain that people who can are unskilled is always a comical thing.
Most anyone I've met who calls any job unskilled is an idiot who thinks to highly of themselves.
Then again many people think support positions aren't as important, and I tend to believe every position is a support position. Doctors support construction workers who support lawyers who support baristas who support salespeople who support hospitality who support entertainment who support plumbers who support IT members who support accountants who support banks who supports....
Who is complaining about unskilled workers?
Anyone who doesn’t think they should get a decent wage.
Who is thinking that people shouldn't get a decent wage?
The people who get the money instead.
Which is who?
Usually executives.
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
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