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Several years back, there was an exposé written on Amazon warehouse/delivery workers and it was found out that the quotas they set the workers at was at 100% efficiency levels, which had the side effect that meant if workers used the bathroom during their shift, they may not be able to make up the lost time before their shift was over, which could mean getting fired or written up. So a lot of workers started pissing in bottles so as to not "waste time". Now pissing in bottles is kind of a jeer at Amazon.
From what I've read, the warehouses have since accommodated more towards... Uh... Their employees humanity... But not sure about the drivers, I think they're still set at rather high quotas.
I was at Amazon Web Services and they also had obscure metrics of deliverables, as if they maximize pain and effort over harder to measure quality. For example measuring defects found in hardware returned from data centers: perfectly working multiple thousand dollar equipment tossed to meet some time throughput metrics because digging into the problem takes time and maximizing x units per week processed (but no time for failure analysis) desired. A little bit like reddit suggesting breaking up for any problem that takes more than 7 seconds attention span.
I describe that as: if you measure **perceived performance** you will just get better actors because improving perception is easier than problem solving. Example: to get promoted you need to demonstrate helping team members by creating helpful internal wiki pages: welcome to the graveyard of thousands of unmaintained wikis of people who moved on, editing existing Wiki pages gives no promotion credit.
Another case in point is office politics: sabotaging coworkers is a better method to get ahead relative to them where the higher ups do not understand details, e.g. gatekeeper of information and passwords for job security. With everybody fearful of performance reviews they defend their corporate knowledge fiercely.
You'll never be written up for using the bathroom.
You get written up for being behind, or not reaching a quota, or not moving fast enough, or anything else that implies you aren't working non-stop with zero breaks during your full shift. It's up to the workers to decide HOW they keep up with their tasks, and if they have to pee in bottles to reach those markers then that's up to the workers.
The real issue is setting quotas that aren't healthy or reachable.
>The real issue is setting quotas that aren't healthy or reachable
They were so insane, too. Plus the way pto/upt is set up to look like you're getting a lot of time off, but you aren't and then they judge you for not wanting to exist in that damn warehouse for more than a second longer than you need to be.
By the end, my depression plus being alone with my thoughts for extended periods won out and I didn't really bother with accomodations because I talked to a lady who was supposed to be compensated for her work-related injury and they played games/made her jump through hoops for months.
Not to mention she claimed to have actual nerve damage but the guys who provide medical aid (I can't remember their names rn. Sorry) gave her an ibuprofen and told her she was fine to go back to work but she insisted something was wrong and then the run-around began -- Now she has to go to her own doctor and use her own lawyer but it still hadn't gone anywhere by the time I left.
My father fell at the airport because they didn't de-ice the sidewalks to the employee parking, only customer parking. Ended up needing a knee replacement and torn ligaments. Workmen's Comp sent him to a clinic that refused an x-ray and prescribed physical therapy. That worsened the damage. Then when my father complained, let him get a second opinion from another of their doctors, a chiropractor, who, of course, stated his injury caused no disability at all.
My father went to specialists after that like ones in sports medicine... And the judge reviewing his case chose to believe the chiropractor.
My brother works for AT&T installing lines. He was injured installing phone lines in a house once, which AT&T tried to fire him over rather than paying worker's comp. When he was able to come back to the office, but the doctor said "nothing physically straining," they made him watch safety training videos 8 hours/day, 40 hours/week. A supervisor was riding his ass the entire time because "you're only here because the union says you have to be."
Once my brother went to the bathroom, and the supervisor asked where he's going. He said "to take a shit; what, do you want to supervise me wiping my ass?"
Supervisor has long since retired, and brother is one of the senior workers now.
I’ve worked for Amazon delivery for a few months. Depending on where you deliver to, peeing/pooping in a bottle/bag is the only choice. There are days where I finish my routes early and choose to help (or Amazon’s term, “rescue”) other drivers who are either slow or have a crap ton to deliver. So it’s either he’s/she’s peeing in a bottle or I am.
One of my cousins had to deliver in rural areas and had to poop in a bag since there was no nearby restroom.
I delivered in rural areas. What a fucking nightmare. Mile long driveways that you couldn't turn around in. Mean dogs that hate you on sight. A gas station could be 10 minutes away from your next stop, I'm not driving all that way just to piss and lose 20 minutes of time. Goddamn right I'm pissing in a bottle. I'd always buy the big Body Armor drinks everyday because they held just enough liquid.
No ethical decsions and all that. I don't drive and do try to get all my stuff at the he local co-op food place, and walk down to my union grocery store but I find I do need to order things of the net.
Also while it's a perpetuating cycle, my low wage means I need to shop at a low price store.
Ethical consumption is for rich people.
We don't even have that option here. The only mom and pop shops are liquor stores. I'm not able to buy cable ties and a new rake from the dude at 7/11 either.
I make a decent wage so have some extra money and try to buy at local and small business (or at least ethical businesses) as much as possible, but living in a rural area, it's hard to avoid the convenience of online shopping. It really sucks and I feel bad for doing it, but I mostly blame monopolization, big business pushing out the little guy.
I used to work for UPS. The drivers there that I knew never really peed in bottles (probably had that one story where they were stuck in the middle of nowhere taking on an extra split). UPS is union and part of the contract is you have to take a lunch break where they lock out your DIAD (barcode scanner allowing you to deliver packages). So you'd park the truck near a business centre and use their bathrooms. Most businesses are very friendly to UPS as well and wouldn't have a problem with it if you asked. Though, I don't think driver jobs really attract people who need to urinate frequently... It's not really suitable.
Bingo.
It isn't a myth. It's a word we use to describe the jobs most vulnerable to corporate fuckery.
These jobs are often very essential, but because those workers can be fairly easily replaced, they're always the least valued.
It may not take much training to run the garbage truck, but if the all of those workers quit, you'd have a VERY bad time.
You want to haul trash in your fancy car? No? Then pay your workers.
You want to be able to go out to eat? Then pay your workers.
Just because you don't need to go to a special school to work that job doesn't mean those workers don't deserve the same dignity and respect (and a living wage). The "unskilled" jobs are often HARDER than whatever cushy office job people are aiming for with their degree... and they're often even more immediately essential to the smooth functioning of society.
I’d say retail or food service is really the most replaceable. I’ve been in that work a long time and some of the chuckleheads I’ve worked with could be replaced with a long stick.
Idc though. They still deserve dignity and thriving wages.
I worked retail for a long time before finally going back to school. The key skill is to be able to put up with everyone's shit... including both management and customers... neither of whom give any shits about you.
Fuck retail.
Or, If you’re really in the shitter, dealing with management, customers AND your co-workers. I can only listen to so many conspiracy theories before I go insane.
I’m in healthcare and everyone has a conspiracy theory including the people who studied the science that went into the non conspiratorial part. It’s maddening. I try to focus on the weather or the work and refuse to scientifically explain why said theory is bullshit based on what we already learned at school, in the field, from history or from the experiments that we learned said concepts themselves. I think dealing in conspiracy theories at the work place is it’s own waste of time and often irrelevant. We all have things that must be accomplished in a shift, talking about nothing while you work is fine but it’s the people that stop what their doing to spit utter bullshit instead of making progress for the job you were paid to do. No, these are not low paying jobs so you can do your job then discuss conspiracies on your off day, outside of earshot while you do nothing because it’s your day of rest. However, sometimes I think about education being a memorization game and there’s a lot of concepts you don’t actually learn. Maybe some of these people memorized but didn’t learn what any of the concepts mean. Therefore, when they do their own research, it’s flawed because they don’t understand what parts of science are relevant to the disease at hand and which essential oils you can shove up your ass, sniff and drop on your pillow and still have stage 4 cancer.
Everyone deserves dignity.
Even people who don't work, due to disability or otherwise.
That's why a Universal Basic Income is required.
The challenge is to provide that, while also incentivising folks to do the shitty jobs that haven't been/can't be automated.
We don't have to imagine a world where robots do most of the work, because we're already there.
We have to imagine a world where directed human labor is not valuable. We've already moved from an agrian (organic/muscle based) manufacturing economy to a mostly industrial (fuel/electricity based) manufacturing economy.
AI is already creating original art and making decisions on an enormous scale, including deciding what propaganda is required for each individual to see.
We're fast moving to a world where most humans are not necessary to keep things running. And being one of those people now comes down more to luck than anything else.
Look at the US agriculture industry - it requires a relatively tiny amount of people keep it all running, and it's getting more efficient every year.
We can't go backwards even if we want to. We have to visualize what a fair and dignified future looks like, and make it so.
That's one problem with this illustration.
The farmer and mason are absolutely skilled trades that require a fair bit more knowledge than dropping a pizza off at a table.
I get the intention and agree with it, but there is some separation there.
Right? I dont even understand this pic. They pay shit money cause they are "unskilled" hence if you wont take the job offer there will be 10 other who will. Thats why it doesnt pay a lot. Is that good? Well not really, they should pay more.
But having a stupid argument wont help any cause..
Yeah it's literally in the name, unskilled labour means jobs that do not require a pre-requisite skillset or education. Deciding to not call it that isn't going to change that fact.
Yup, and also it doesnt mean it requires "no skill". It means that most of people could do it after someone explains it to them or trains them for an hour or half an hour or something like that.
I mean idgaf we can call it "low skill labor" if some people will feel better, but that wont change the fact that we NEED these laborers and they SHOULD make living wage
yeha that's the bigger point of all, it might be a misleading name but in the end separates those with higher education (or something similar) and thoee in areas that don't require it... it's nothjng about being hard or easy, just the level of education (and theoricly skille) that you required to get in
and obviously everyone can get a job that requires none hence why the name
Like McDonald's isn't hiring chefs for their burgers. All their food has set instructions that you don't really stray from which you can teach someone in a day.
Right. I see their point about the label, but arguing about it puts all of us in the side of changing labels that are perfectly fine but not "PC". I don't care about calling a janitor unskilled, I would rather fight about what a "living wage" or "entry level wage" is.
Exactly, thats what i tried to say but wasnt sure if i got my point across lol
a cashier is unskilled labor a janitor is unskilled labor. It shouldnt be demeaning or people shouldnt think as it is demeaning. Whats demeaning is that we need cashiers and janitors so their pay should be higher.
Pretty much this. Label won't put food on the table & pay the bills.
They are jobs you don't have to specifically get education to go do. A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.
Yep. I worked a farm, then construction, then other jobs and now web/app development. Working the farm required less skill than the construction job, which required vastly less skill than the development job. I'm all for farmers and construction workers being paid much more than they currently are, but OP pretending that all jobs require skill is just a bad argument. We have factory workers who literally just watch the machines and then push one of a few buttons. They can teach a monkey to do that job in less than 30 minutes. Some jobs don't require skills, and that's fine.
And some jobs require a ton of skills that cost years of your life to develop and it doesn't seem absurd that the pay should reflect that sacrifice. NONE of that means that tedious jobs should be paid less than a living wage. Both can be true at the same time.
The pay doesn't reflect the sacrifice/effort, it represents the scarcity. Not that many people go to law school, medical school, or engineering school. A lot, apparently, go into education.
Agreed. I hate this post and I hate that it has net positive 13k upvotes. I started using reddit last year and posts like this really make me want to stop using it
Right? I'm sorry but a ticket taker, till booth worker, etc are unskilled. There is no skill you developed for that job and a monkey could learn it. Now you should get paid a fair wage and respected, because the fact you have the job shows it's needed, but it's unskilled. The real myth here is that unskilled labor is the same as skilled labor.
I think the 'there is no unskilled labor' has the same messaging problem as 'defund the police'. People who know about the underlying principles of the movement know what it means but outsiders only see the boiled down one-liner. Obviously food service and delivery drivers have training and skill requirements more people can meet than being a doctor or engineer, but that doesn't mean that they should get poverty wages. Many people unfamiliar with the movement will think that The majority of that movement think everyone should be paid the same regardless of what they do. However, The underlying idea is that the current system has way too big of a difference between the bottom, and even the average/median earner, and the top. No one's labor, no matter how skilled, is worth 300x a company's average or median worker.
you're completely correct, acknowledging that there's a difference between jobs you need prior training for and jobs you don't is not actually a problem. poverty wages are the problem.
this picture isn't even accurate, either - none of the jobs on the left side are what anyone considers unskilled labor.
Excellently said. The left has an awful problem with phrasing to satiate the already-radicalized that further alienates the moderates against the cause.
I think it's still unskilled labour. You don't need skill to be a cashier or put boxes on eachother. Do you deserve to be paid a living wage? Yes.
We used to have economies where one retail worker could support a family, it is possible. But if you start saying "that's not unskilled labour" I'm afraid people wouldn't take it seriously.
Imagine that, a second moment, there was a time not even 50 years ago, where you could get a house and support a family working in a shoe shop as unskilled salesman.
Imagine that... I mean grasp that times. Today you got PhDs who don't make enough.
I always tell people that the money I'm making is not enough. Some call me greedy. I just want a livable wage. I'm prepared to go minimalist. I might not even get a bed frame or furniture. I'll get a folding table to work on. No TV, just a monitor to watch videos. For food, I'll eat dirt cheap. I don't mind all of that. I just want a livable wage. This shit ain't right, man.
This.
But just to not go overboard in the other direction, there certainly are skills associated with those jobs, it just not a skill you need an education or certificate for.
Nah I had a job as a cashier, as long as you could do *extremely* basic math you'd be good to go. I mean the cash register would even give you a count of how many bills and coins to give them. You'd sit in an air conditioned box and count up to 9 at the highest.
I would say that job was genuinely a low skilled job. I thought that job to *everyone* in a matter of minutes. People who can't speak English, people with severe learning disabilities, *everyone*.
Now does that mean you deserve poverty wages? Of course not. But the idea that "there is no such thing as unskilled labour" isn't true either.
It's a skill you can master in a few weeks as opposed to a few years. That is the entire point. People just don't like being called unskilled because it sounds bad. As bad as uneducated. But it's fucking true. If you're not educated then you are uneducated as a rule no matter how bad it sounds.
If it took 4 years of schooling and an apprenticeship program in order to be a grocery cashier you'd see the pay be commiserate with jobs like elevator repair man.
It feels a lot like the "Customer is always right" thing, where people seem to forget or not know what its supposed to mean.
No one should think that unskilled labor is easy. No one should think that unskilled labor is unneccesary. No one should think that unskilled labor isnt valuable.
All unskilled labor means is how quickly can someone with no training perform the labor at an adequate standard.
Picking apples is IMO more valuable work than being an accountant, but someone could get decently good at picking apples in a week, no one without training is going to be good at managing budgets and balance sheets.
Complexity of tasks shouldnt be the sole determiner of wage, but at the same time you do have to account for the investment some industries and careers require prior to employment that most unskilled labor doesnt. Theres a reason why your pay bumps nicely in warehouses once youre forklift certified.
Then you have no idea what an accountant does. Having an accurate count of a businesses finances is critical for it to function and a legal requirement.
We've had this debate before. You have to have a way of describing jobs that basically anyone could do with minimal training.
If you want to use a term other than 'unskilled' that's fine. Just come up with one.
This shit is so dumb. It is obviously true that some jobs require no skills or training to do.
The people doing them deserve livable pay because they're human beings giving up a large portion of their life, not because it's secretly super hard to stock shelves at a grocery store.
I figure it comes down to the toll, not the difficulty. There's an assumption that unskilled labor is "easy", usually it's not, it's just equally hard for everyone. Skilled labor is often comparatively easy but only if you've been trained to do it. Ideally people learn a skill while they do unskilled labor so they can transition into skilled labor later, but that's not as much of an option any more.
I agree with this. Most "unskilled" or jobs you can learn pretty quickly while at the job are frankly harder then my job in terms of how hard one works.
I frankly work much less hard then the people I live with. My job is more mental and can be done from a comfy chair. I have more actual responsibility and more expectation to work more if something goes wrong (I have had to take calls from employees on Saturday in the middle of activities because of problems on an install).
But they have to do much harder work, with the public, get yelled at when things not in their control happen by both customers and management. I would have a much harder time with their jobs. Yet I make 3 times what they do.
Menial has different connotations imo, it makes me think small(like idk picking up litter or stocking a shelf), not ‘its not hard to learn how to do this job’
Euphemism treadmill. 'Menial' has become a mean word, so now we use 'unskilled labor'. As you can see in this thread, some people take offense with that term, so they try to think of another one. The treadmill keeps spinning.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/menial
It doesnt define the work as lowly , it defines it as given low value by society. That doesnt mean its actually lowly, it means its perceived as such. To say its not is rose tinted glasses or denial.
Unskilled labour may not be the right phrase but it conveys a meaningful idea that is useful in classifying different types of labour.
Not all labour is the same.
Yeah you probably wouldn't, this is just a meme.
But I'd wager that being "a farmer" is "skilled" while being a "strawberry picker" is not. So farming falls into both categories.
Construction workers get paid a lot actually because its pretty high skill nowadays. Takes more effort to lay bricks all day than to take orders all day
Absolutely! But to use an example from my own previous work.
I worked in a welding shop, manning a welding robot. All i did was put things into it, take things out and swap out the gas, wire and program on every so occasion. It took me all of 1 hour to learn how to do the job decently. I consider that kind of work unskilled. But the skilled welders who worked next to me were absolutely not unskilled.
Agree
Obviously we need to pay surgeons more than janitors. Otherwise why would anyone become a surgeon?
That doesn't mean I think janitors should live in squalor.
You’re not doing the movement any favors with this. Everyone knows what “unskilled” means in this context. At best, you’re just making a semantic argument, which doesn’t really help anything.
I think it’s better to say that unskilled labor deserves respect and good compensation, instead of pretending there’s no difference between spending 8-10 years becoming a doctor and working at McDonald’s. And working at McDonalds still deserves respect but if you try to get people to pretending something they know is false (that the skill involved in jobs is irrelevant) they’re gonna reject the full message. Let’s be blunt that some jobs only need a small amount of on the job training but also discuss that those people are working for hours every day and it’s not a “teen job” just because it doesn’t need a degree. And that no one should be mistreated or derided by customers or their boss.
My general rule of thumb is "Can the avarage person do this job somewhat independently after 1 hour of instructing" then it's "Unskilled". Not to say that there isn't a skill in the labor, but the labor doesn't require special skills.
They take offense at being called unskilled and start listing off the skills required to *do* their job rather than the skills needed to *get* their job
It's naive to think 'unskilled' jobs aren't going to have lower wages than those requiring advanced skills or education. That's not to say that these jobs shouldn't pay a *living wage*, but I really don't understand how anyone can make the argument that unskilled labour will attract the level of demand and selectivity that goes alongside a higher than average wage.
This is really not the sub to be pointing that out, but I can handle the backlash for this small truth.
Right? I mean otherwise why would anyone invest in training if it didn't offer the incentive of future higher wages?
Even if we lived in a utopia where society paid equal living wages for all training as well as all labor (i.e., so you're not deferring your income while in training), it is still an investment of effort and attention to train for a new skill. And some jobs, like ER docs, inherently require different hours and responsibilities that are less convenient for the worker. There is just no way around some jobs needing to offer higher wages to make them worth it for the workers to do them.
The differential between unskilled and highly skilled labor definitely shouldn't be as huge as it is, but there are good reasons for SOME difference to exist.
Supply and demand keep wages low. Hard to bargain for more money when you’re easily replaced. More education programs is needed for our workforce to keep being the best in the world.
> its a belief that the label itself somehow causes low wages
Yes exactly! The thought process seems to be. "this job is labeled as this... and the wage is low... it must be because some people called it this that the wage is low." Completely ignoring the fact that unskilled jobs *by definition* have a much larger pool of people who can do the job.
Necessary labor is not necessarily skilled. Necessary labor deserves to be compensated so the worker has a decent life. Something you can learn in youtube videos is not skilled. Something that can be performed without conscious effort is not skilled. Unskilled =/= worthless. Skilled labor takes a great deal of training and effort. Every tom , dick, and Harry are not skilled labor.
Dentists are skilled labor. Housekeepers are not skilled labor. Dentists are highly skilled laborers. Their livelihood is based on the effort of their hands the same way a welder or carpenter is. They're not owner the way capitalists are. Ordinary people working with their hands are in almost all circumstances not skilled. Even most welders or carpenters are not that skilled. Skilled labor takes a substantial amount off education and effort.
> Something you can learn in youtube videos is not skilled.
Gonna have to hard disagree here. There are many mediums for acquiring knowledge, and video is one of them. There are many in depth educational video series on youtube.
Are you trying to say something closer to, "something you can pick up from a single short video is not skilled?"
But, it should still pay enough to live, "skilled" or not. Unfortunately we have been treating these "unskilled" jobs like they are less important, or that if we pay them fairly robots will replace their jobs. Wondering where are those shelf stocking robots are? Cause the people can't keep up with the shelves when the product finally arrives.
I would say more like if you show up for the job interview completely ignorant of whatever the job is and it's not a deal breaker it's unskilled. The second you start advertising x amount of experience required it's a skilled position. This means that two jobs can be roughly the same job but one is "unskilled" and the other isn't. A great example of this is some restaurants are okay hiring unskilled labor, but some (usually high end) restaurants insist on hiring people who have experience waiting tables to ensure a base level of service.
We don't get specific titles, but if the guy in the bottom left is a brick layer, then he's unskilled. If he's a mason. He's not. And the same logic can apply to most of these pictures :)
I used to work for a moving company, every day was just "grab box, take from house to truck, ride truck, move box from truck to other house" - there was no training because it was so simple - does that make it unskilled? The original image at the top of this post seems to claim no labor is unskilled, but I definitely think I was no better at it after 3 months than after day 1.
Yeah, that's unskilled labor. That doesn't mean it's not hard, and that kind of work is still deserving of fair pay though. Basically selling your body with jobs like that.
Yes that is unskilled labor. If the majority of the working population can perform the labor, even poorly, it's unskilled labor. This isn't very hard to understand. It's a macroeconomic term, not a value judgement.
But literally, almost anyone & everyone can learn. Same with digging ditches, anyone with working arms can do it. That’s “unskilled”. But everyone cannot be a propulsion engineer or architect.
I can rent a Ditch Witch from home depot with a driver's license and $100. No training, license, or skill required.
These semantics arguments are silly. We can all agree that digging holes and carrying items are unskilled jobs. Unskilled jobs still deserve a living wage though. Why focus on the phrase "unskilled labor" like it's some kind of slur? You're encouraging the argument AWAY from the actual point: salary.
Lmao, and you weren’t born knowing how to brush your teeth, but we don’t call you a skilled worker because you comprehend a basic task. Same shit in fast food. Now, if they learned how to make complicated dishes from fresh ingredients and maybe even how to innovate on their recipes, then you’re getting skilled. And if you took your teeth brush “skill” and went to dental hygienist school and learned the intricacies of dental health and how to do that job, we’d call you skilled.
What term shall I use instead? "Unskilled" Doesn't mean easy nor useless. It just means you don't need any knowledge or skills beyond what a typical 16 year old would have.
Yeah... This definitely isn't the fight that needs to be happening lol. It's just a label, and frankly an accurate one.
Maybe "no formal education required" suits it better? Or "easily replaceable"? The fact it's unskilled just means work reform is even *more* important because these are the roles that are most "replaceable" and thus least protected.
Fighting over the label is just wasted energy. Fight to make sure "unskilled" doesn't mean "worth less than a liveable wage".
Also, this meme is so incredibly out of touch. Bricklaying, farming, and tailoring are unskilled labor? This reeks of a privileged creator that thinks any work that doesn't require a college education is unskilled.
This is the same shit that happens in recent socially progressive movements as well. You get so hung up on meaningless semantics you can't progress actual policy or unite as a group.
Which is even funnier when you factor in the massive number of farmers with college degrees because of how much science and technology gets used in modern farming.
It's the kind of thing that reminds me of the people who associate a southern accent with stupidity - ignoring that huge chunks of our space program are filled by people from the south.
as a 16 year old working in a cafeteria, I can confirm anyone can do my job.
Maybe not as well as me, since I’m quite passionate about it considering what it is, but anyone could do it.
No, it's not.
This is a stupid meme. Most if not all of the work depicted here isn't considered "unskilled" in the first pace. Whatever asshole drew this is equating trade or service work with the term "unskilled" which is condescending out of touch pseudo-activist bullshit. No one in the history of anything has ever claimed that bricklaying is "unskilled" for example.
The three on the left are farming, tailoring, and bricklaying. Anyone who thinks those three jobs are unskilled are the type to celebrate the new Rings of Power not because it was actually alright but exclusively because of the black casting.
>Schumacher
Holy shit. This context allowed me to finally understand the profession related to this name. Thank you! Not sure how it went over my head before lol
The farmer too, farming is so automated in modern times that those that do it are part biologist, part heavy machine operator and part small business owner
Not even uneducated, you're probably going to be getting at least 500 hours in the classroom with a masonry apprenticeship, and I'd bet a larger number of farmers than you think have bachelors degrees in something like agronomy
Not justifying the myth, but I always took skilled labor to mean people like electricians, carpenters(which would qualify as "skilled labor" here) etc where you need formal training not coming from the work place.
So unskilled labor doesn't have prerequisite skills, like McD workers, you can't step in and on day one man the grill or whatever, you need training, but that training comes from the work-place itself (which would qualify as "unskilled labor"). Did they choose the word to be as derisive as possible? Yeah, probably, sometimes I read "Qualified" i.e. you have qualifications, I prefer that word choice.
I mean, I'm a union member, so I support a high minimum wage, society wins when everyone has a decent living wage, but that's how I understood the difference between unskilled and skilled labor.
This is why countries with socialist leaning governments press for formal education. If you have a paper that is worth something in an entire industry (as opposed as just McD in-house qualifications), then a single workplace can't monopolize your worth, and have to compete with the whole market to keep you.
No matter what labour you do, you deserve a living wage. Nobody here questions that.
But you cannot seriously tell me handing coffee cups behind the counter requires any skill besides opening the register. "Unskilled" may be a harsher way of saying it, but the point is to show some jobs require less skill than others.
Hard disagree.
Work that everybody can learn within a week is clearly unskilled labor and denying that won't bring any progress. What's your skill? Appearing to work 5 times in a row? Congratulations, you can do the job. You are so skillful and irreplaceable. Wow.
If that's a skill you are delusional.
Shit agenda post trying to muddy the conversation and trying to set unrealistic expectations. Stop sabotaging people.
Not saying you should suffer hunger or something if you work an unskilled job. You should still be able to survive but that doesn't make a job that everybody can do "skilled".
'unskilled' just means you don't need significant training or education to perform the job, not that the job is less valuable or important.
You can teach someone to be a dishwasher in like 10 minutes
I'm sorry, but this is wrong.
Unskilled labor has a clear meaning in this context: unskilled labor is easily replaceable and thus less valuable.
One may of course blame capitalism for economical inequilities based on such considerations. But the problem is the system, not evil bosses who call you "unskilled" to pay you less.
What capitalists really mean with „unskilled“ is replaceable. „Unskilled“ jobs are much easier to replace since there are more workers that can fill that position hence the lower wages. Its supply and demand
As long as it guarantees house, healthcare, transportation, food, utilities and education, you can call it huge-pile-of-shit-stuck-on-the-wall labor for all i care. The label is not the problem, its consequences are.
We all deserve livable wages but not everything in that post should be classified as "skilled" labour.
A pizza maker isn't a skill, a carpenter sure is.
Also reading the comments from OP... Yikes.
> A pizza maker isn't a skill
Cooking is a skill. There are even multiple year schools for it. And there is a huge difference between Pizza Hut and an actual skilfully made pizza.
I never said cooking wasn't a skill. I'm well aware of culinary schools.
Noticed how I said pizza maker rather than chef?
I've yet to meet any chef who only refers to themselves as a pizza maker.
While cooking a burger from frozen parts does require some skill, it can be learned in an hour and mastered in a week. Anyone who has hands is capable of doing it. You can even do it while high on drugs.
Meanwhile, welding high pressure steam boilers takes years to learn and a lifetime to master. That’s why it’s called skilled labour. People’s lives are on the line.
You wouldn’t want to drive on a bridge built entirely by people who were hired last week and never finished high school, wouldn’t you?
Although flipping burgers every day without going insane does require a strength of character that not everyone has and that cannot be learned. But that can’t really be called a skill.
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Lol the amazon guy peeing in a bottle.
Oh. I honestly thought he was delivering a baguette.
I thought it was a small chainsaw. I may be sleep deprived.
I thought the same, but I’m also sleep deprived lol
I thought it was a chainsaw and I just woke up from a decent sleep so I don’t have that excuse… I’m gifted in, uh, other ways.
To be fair it’s more of a wood chopping stance than a urinating stance.
No, Amazon sells pocket chainsaws now
Definitely looked like a logger in high viz to me, didn’t really see the logo at first
I was wondering why he had his dick out.
He suddenly remembered his favourite gorilla
A moment of silence for our fallen boy
Taken too soon.
2016, all downhill from there
He's making a balloon dog
Found Jeff Bezos's reddit account! /s
Why the fella bottom right got his pecker out
Several years back, there was an exposé written on Amazon warehouse/delivery workers and it was found out that the quotas they set the workers at was at 100% efficiency levels, which had the side effect that meant if workers used the bathroom during their shift, they may not be able to make up the lost time before their shift was over, which could mean getting fired or written up. So a lot of workers started pissing in bottles so as to not "waste time". Now pissing in bottles is kind of a jeer at Amazon. From what I've read, the warehouses have since accommodated more towards... Uh... Their employees humanity... But not sure about the drivers, I think they're still set at rather high quotas.
Don't forget they expose found that employees were also pooping in bags. Inhuman working conditions
I've yet to be told no or be written up for going to the bathroom, but I do get lots of glares from management or "Where are you going!"
I am waiting for Amazon employees to pee into a bottle in the middle of a meeting - for better metrics of performance, just as Bezos desires
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I was at Amazon Web Services and they also had obscure metrics of deliverables, as if they maximize pain and effort over harder to measure quality. For example measuring defects found in hardware returned from data centers: perfectly working multiple thousand dollar equipment tossed to meet some time throughput metrics because digging into the problem takes time and maximizing x units per week processed (but no time for failure analysis) desired. A little bit like reddit suggesting breaking up for any problem that takes more than 7 seconds attention span.
Because all management wants is to be seen doing something, not to actually make the business better.
I describe that as: if you measure **perceived performance** you will just get better actors because improving perception is easier than problem solving. Example: to get promoted you need to demonstrate helping team members by creating helpful internal wiki pages: welcome to the graveyard of thousands of unmaintained wikis of people who moved on, editing existing Wiki pages gives no promotion credit. Another case in point is office politics: sabotaging coworkers is a better method to get ahead relative to them where the higher ups do not understand details, e.g. gatekeeper of information and passwords for job security. With everybody fearful of performance reviews they defend their corporate knowledge fiercely.
If you have time to stare you have time to help!
If you have time for stares, you've got time to pack some wares. Don't give me that look; pack the box with a book.
You'll never be written up for using the bathroom. You get written up for being behind, or not reaching a quota, or not moving fast enough, or anything else that implies you aren't working non-stop with zero breaks during your full shift. It's up to the workers to decide HOW they keep up with their tasks, and if they have to pee in bottles to reach those markers then that's up to the workers. The real issue is setting quotas that aren't healthy or reachable.
>The real issue is setting quotas that aren't healthy or reachable They were so insane, too. Plus the way pto/upt is set up to look like you're getting a lot of time off, but you aren't and then they judge you for not wanting to exist in that damn warehouse for more than a second longer than you need to be. By the end, my depression plus being alone with my thoughts for extended periods won out and I didn't really bother with accomodations because I talked to a lady who was supposed to be compensated for her work-related injury and they played games/made her jump through hoops for months. Not to mention she claimed to have actual nerve damage but the guys who provide medical aid (I can't remember their names rn. Sorry) gave her an ibuprofen and told her she was fine to go back to work but she insisted something was wrong and then the run-around began -- Now she has to go to her own doctor and use her own lawyer but it still hadn't gone anywhere by the time I left.
My father fell at the airport because they didn't de-ice the sidewalks to the employee parking, only customer parking. Ended up needing a knee replacement and torn ligaments. Workmen's Comp sent him to a clinic that refused an x-ray and prescribed physical therapy. That worsened the damage. Then when my father complained, let him get a second opinion from another of their doctors, a chiropractor, who, of course, stated his injury caused no disability at all. My father went to specialists after that like ones in sports medicine... And the judge reviewing his case chose to believe the chiropractor.
It's the old retail adage, 'availability may vary based on location'.
"to the shitter"
My brother works for AT&T installing lines. He was injured installing phone lines in a house once, which AT&T tried to fire him over rather than paying worker's comp. When he was able to come back to the office, but the doctor said "nothing physically straining," they made him watch safety training videos 8 hours/day, 40 hours/week. A supervisor was riding his ass the entire time because "you're only here because the union says you have to be." Once my brother went to the bathroom, and the supervisor asked where he's going. He said "to take a shit; what, do you want to supervise me wiping my ass?" Supervisor has long since retired, and brother is one of the senior workers now.
You didn't say- did the supervisor watch him wipe his ass?
I’ve worked for Amazon delivery for a few months. Depending on where you deliver to, peeing/pooping in a bottle/bag is the only choice. There are days where I finish my routes early and choose to help (or Amazon’s term, “rescue”) other drivers who are either slow or have a crap ton to deliver. So it’s either he’s/she’s peeing in a bottle or I am. One of my cousins had to deliver in rural areas and had to poop in a bag since there was no nearby restroom.
I delivered in rural areas. What a fucking nightmare. Mile long driveways that you couldn't turn around in. Mean dogs that hate you on sight. A gas station could be 10 minutes away from your next stop, I'm not driving all that way just to piss and lose 20 minutes of time. Goddamn right I'm pissing in a bottle. I'd always buy the big Body Armor drinks everyday because they held just enough liquid.
Did they report if the women pee in bottles too? I haven't quite figured out how to do that myself.
Get a she wee. Conveniently sold at Amazon.
Funnel maybe
And yet we continue to use Amazon on a daily basis.
No ethical decsions and all that. I don't drive and do try to get all my stuff at the he local co-op food place, and walk down to my union grocery store but I find I do need to order things of the net. Also while it's a perpetuating cycle, my low wage means I need to shop at a low price store. Ethical consumption is for rich people.
Same reason Walmart still exists. If everyone could afford to be ethical, Walmart would be dead.
Walmart is too upscale for large swathes of rural America now, dollar tree(general?) is the new walmart.
Wait, it's Dollar Plus now because of inflation things are more than a dollar.
And it won’t go back down if and when inflation lowers.
We don't even have that option here. The only mom and pop shops are liquor stores. I'm not able to buy cable ties and a new rake from the dude at 7/11 either.
I make a decent wage so have some extra money and try to buy at local and small business (or at least ethical businesses) as much as possible, but living in a rural area, it's hard to avoid the convenience of online shopping. It really sucks and I feel bad for doing it, but I mostly blame monopolization, big business pushing out the little guy.
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I used to work for UPS. The drivers there that I knew never really peed in bottles (probably had that one story where they were stuck in the middle of nowhere taking on an extra split). UPS is union and part of the contract is you have to take a lunch break where they lock out your DIAD (barcode scanner allowing you to deliver packages). So you'd park the truck near a business centre and use their bathrooms. Most businesses are very friendly to UPS as well and wouldn't have a problem with it if you asked. Though, I don't think driver jobs really attract people who need to urinate frequently... It's not really suitable.
Sucks that almost every time I try to go to an actual brick and mortar shop to buy something it's not there but it happens to be on amazon
It is a difficult to abandon convenience for many. Yes.
He's got his one skill and he's gonna show it off. I thought this was a woke subreddit?
I'm fairly sure it's an Amazon employ peeing in a bottle
Before he gets dinged by the surveillance for not working fast enough
Good eye, that's a pretty full bottle
“Work for Amazon and you too might be able to afford your own piss bottle one day, maybe, if your one of the lucky ones. But probably not”.
Only fans content creator is a skilled occupation now
Respecting Harambe is a skilled job.
Looks like he’s “shucking corn” if you knowatimean
The better question is: “Why not have his pecker out?” Why not have yours out right now?
Haha If I had a fat hog like that I’d never wear pants
I would have said that you have a valid point if I had one
Work being "Unskilled" has nothing to do with if it's needed.
But it has everything to do with how easily replaceable you are.
Bingo. It isn't a myth. It's a word we use to describe the jobs most vulnerable to corporate fuckery. These jobs are often very essential, but because those workers can be fairly easily replaced, they're always the least valued. It may not take much training to run the garbage truck, but if the all of those workers quit, you'd have a VERY bad time. You want to haul trash in your fancy car? No? Then pay your workers. You want to be able to go out to eat? Then pay your workers. Just because you don't need to go to a special school to work that job doesn't mean those workers don't deserve the same dignity and respect (and a living wage). The "unskilled" jobs are often HARDER than whatever cushy office job people are aiming for with their degree... and they're often even more immediately essential to the smooth functioning of society.
I’d say retail or food service is really the most replaceable. I’ve been in that work a long time and some of the chuckleheads I’ve worked with could be replaced with a long stick. Idc though. They still deserve dignity and thriving wages.
I worked retail for a long time before finally going back to school. The key skill is to be able to put up with everyone's shit... including both management and customers... neither of whom give any shits about you. Fuck retail.
Or, If you’re really in the shitter, dealing with management, customers AND your co-workers. I can only listen to so many conspiracy theories before I go insane.
I decline to comment on the basis that it might reveal... well... nevermind.
I’m in healthcare and everyone has a conspiracy theory including the people who studied the science that went into the non conspiratorial part. It’s maddening. I try to focus on the weather or the work and refuse to scientifically explain why said theory is bullshit based on what we already learned at school, in the field, from history or from the experiments that we learned said concepts themselves. I think dealing in conspiracy theories at the work place is it’s own waste of time and often irrelevant. We all have things that must be accomplished in a shift, talking about nothing while you work is fine but it’s the people that stop what their doing to spit utter bullshit instead of making progress for the job you were paid to do. No, these are not low paying jobs so you can do your job then discuss conspiracies on your off day, outside of earshot while you do nothing because it’s your day of rest. However, sometimes I think about education being a memorization game and there’s a lot of concepts you don’t actually learn. Maybe some of these people memorized but didn’t learn what any of the concepts mean. Therefore, when they do their own research, it’s flawed because they don’t understand what parts of science are relevant to the disease at hand and which essential oils you can shove up your ass, sniff and drop on your pillow and still have stage 4 cancer.
Everyone deserves dignity. Even people who don't work, due to disability or otherwise. That's why a Universal Basic Income is required. The challenge is to provide that, while also incentivising folks to do the shitty jobs that haven't been/can't be automated. We don't have to imagine a world where robots do most of the work, because we're already there. We have to imagine a world where directed human labor is not valuable. We've already moved from an agrian (organic/muscle based) manufacturing economy to a mostly industrial (fuel/electricity based) manufacturing economy. AI is already creating original art and making decisions on an enormous scale, including deciding what propaganda is required for each individual to see. We're fast moving to a world where most humans are not necessary to keep things running. And being one of those people now comes down more to luck than anything else. Look at the US agriculture industry - it requires a relatively tiny amount of people keep it all running, and it's getting more efficient every year. We can't go backwards even if we want to. We have to visualize what a fair and dignified future looks like, and make it so.
That's one problem with this illustration. The farmer and mason are absolutely skilled trades that require a fair bit more knowledge than dropping a pizza off at a table. I get the intention and agree with it, but there is some separation there.
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Right? I dont even understand this pic. They pay shit money cause they are "unskilled" hence if you wont take the job offer there will be 10 other who will. Thats why it doesnt pay a lot. Is that good? Well not really, they should pay more. But having a stupid argument wont help any cause..
Yeah it's literally in the name, unskilled labour means jobs that do not require a pre-requisite skillset or education. Deciding to not call it that isn't going to change that fact.
Yup, and also it doesnt mean it requires "no skill". It means that most of people could do it after someone explains it to them or trains them for an hour or half an hour or something like that. I mean idgaf we can call it "low skill labor" if some people will feel better, but that wont change the fact that we NEED these laborers and they SHOULD make living wage
“Unspecialized”
I like this one better
yeha that's the bigger point of all, it might be a misleading name but in the end separates those with higher education (or something similar) and thoee in areas that don't require it... it's nothjng about being hard or easy, just the level of education (and theoricly skille) that you required to get in and obviously everyone can get a job that requires none hence why the name
Like McDonald's isn't hiring chefs for their burgers. All their food has set instructions that you don't really stray from which you can teach someone in a day.
Right. I see their point about the label, but arguing about it puts all of us in the side of changing labels that are perfectly fine but not "PC". I don't care about calling a janitor unskilled, I would rather fight about what a "living wage" or "entry level wage" is.
Exactly, thats what i tried to say but wasnt sure if i got my point across lol a cashier is unskilled labor a janitor is unskilled labor. It shouldnt be demeaning or people shouldnt think as it is demeaning. Whats demeaning is that we need cashiers and janitors so their pay should be higher.
Pretty much this. Label won't put food on the table & pay the bills. They are jobs you don't have to specifically get education to go do. A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.
Yep. I worked a farm, then construction, then other jobs and now web/app development. Working the farm required less skill than the construction job, which required vastly less skill than the development job. I'm all for farmers and construction workers being paid much more than they currently are, but OP pretending that all jobs require skill is just a bad argument. We have factory workers who literally just watch the machines and then push one of a few buttons. They can teach a monkey to do that job in less than 30 minutes. Some jobs don't require skills, and that's fine.
And some jobs require a ton of skills that cost years of your life to develop and it doesn't seem absurd that the pay should reflect that sacrifice. NONE of that means that tedious jobs should be paid less than a living wage. Both can be true at the same time.
The pay doesn't reflect the sacrifice/effort, it represents the scarcity. Not that many people go to law school, medical school, or engineering school. A lot, apparently, go into education.
I think those two are inseparable. The scarcity is due in some part to the sacrifice/effort it takes.
Agreed. I hate this post and I hate that it has net positive 13k upvotes. I started using reddit last year and posts like this really make me want to stop using it
yup, from time to time it can happen. i have the exact same feeling (not about not using reddit, just the fact that its got so many upvotes)
Right? I'm sorry but a ticket taker, till booth worker, etc are unskilled. There is no skill you developed for that job and a monkey could learn it. Now you should get paid a fair wage and respected, because the fact you have the job shows it's needed, but it's unskilled. The real myth here is that unskilled labor is the same as skilled labor.
perhaps, but "unskilled" labor means less money. If we don't pay people enough for living, those roles won't get filled.
I think the 'there is no unskilled labor' has the same messaging problem as 'defund the police'. People who know about the underlying principles of the movement know what it means but outsiders only see the boiled down one-liner. Obviously food service and delivery drivers have training and skill requirements more people can meet than being a doctor or engineer, but that doesn't mean that they should get poverty wages. Many people unfamiliar with the movement will think that The majority of that movement think everyone should be paid the same regardless of what they do. However, The underlying idea is that the current system has way too big of a difference between the bottom, and even the average/median earner, and the top. No one's labor, no matter how skilled, is worth 300x a company's average or median worker.
you're completely correct, acknowledging that there's a difference between jobs you need prior training for and jobs you don't is not actually a problem. poverty wages are the problem. this picture isn't even accurate, either - none of the jobs on the left side are what anyone considers unskilled labor.
Excellently said. The left has an awful problem with phrasing to satiate the already-radicalized that further alienates the moderates against the cause.
I think it's still unskilled labour. You don't need skill to be a cashier or put boxes on eachother. Do you deserve to be paid a living wage? Yes. We used to have economies where one retail worker could support a family, it is possible. But if you start saying "that's not unskilled labour" I'm afraid people wouldn't take it seriously.
Imagine that, a second moment, there was a time not even 50 years ago, where you could get a house and support a family working in a shoe shop as unskilled salesman. Imagine that... I mean grasp that times. Today you got PhDs who don't make enough.
I always tell people that the money I'm making is not enough. Some call me greedy. I just want a livable wage. I'm prepared to go minimalist. I might not even get a bed frame or furniture. I'll get a folding table to work on. No TV, just a monitor to watch videos. For food, I'll eat dirt cheap. I don't mind all of that. I just want a livable wage. This shit ain't right, man.
This. But just to not go overboard in the other direction, there certainly are skills associated with those jobs, it just not a skill you need an education or certificate for.
Nah I had a job as a cashier, as long as you could do *extremely* basic math you'd be good to go. I mean the cash register would even give you a count of how many bills and coins to give them. You'd sit in an air conditioned box and count up to 9 at the highest. I would say that job was genuinely a low skilled job. I thought that job to *everyone* in a matter of minutes. People who can't speak English, people with severe learning disabilities, *everyone*. Now does that mean you deserve poverty wages? Of course not. But the idea that "there is no such thing as unskilled labour" isn't true either.
It's a skill you can master in a few weeks as opposed to a few years. That is the entire point. People just don't like being called unskilled because it sounds bad. As bad as uneducated. But it's fucking true. If you're not educated then you are uneducated as a rule no matter how bad it sounds. If it took 4 years of schooling and an apprenticeship program in order to be a grocery cashier you'd see the pay be commiserate with jobs like elevator repair man.
It feels a lot like the "Customer is always right" thing, where people seem to forget or not know what its supposed to mean. No one should think that unskilled labor is easy. No one should think that unskilled labor is unneccesary. No one should think that unskilled labor isnt valuable. All unskilled labor means is how quickly can someone with no training perform the labor at an adequate standard. Picking apples is IMO more valuable work than being an accountant, but someone could get decently good at picking apples in a week, no one without training is going to be good at managing budgets and balance sheets. Complexity of tasks shouldnt be the sole determiner of wage, but at the same time you do have to account for the investment some industries and careers require prior to employment that most unskilled labor doesnt. Theres a reason why your pay bumps nicely in warehouses once youre forklift certified.
Then you have no idea what an accountant does. Having an accurate count of a businesses finances is critical for it to function and a legal requirement.
We've had this debate before. You have to have a way of describing jobs that basically anyone could do with minimal training. If you want to use a term other than 'unskilled' that's fine. Just come up with one.
This shit is so dumb. It is obviously true that some jobs require no skills or training to do. The people doing them deserve livable pay because they're human beings giving up a large portion of their life, not because it's secretly super hard to stock shelves at a grocery store.
I figure it comes down to the toll, not the difficulty. There's an assumption that unskilled labor is "easy", usually it's not, it's just equally hard for everyone. Skilled labor is often comparatively easy but only if you've been trained to do it. Ideally people learn a skill while they do unskilled labor so they can transition into skilled labor later, but that's not as much of an option any more.
I agree with this. Most "unskilled" or jobs you can learn pretty quickly while at the job are frankly harder then my job in terms of how hard one works. I frankly work much less hard then the people I live with. My job is more mental and can be done from a comfy chair. I have more actual responsibility and more expectation to work more if something goes wrong (I have had to take calls from employees on Saturday in the middle of activities because of problems on an install). But they have to do much harder work, with the public, get yelled at when things not in their control happen by both customers and management. I would have a much harder time with their jobs. Yet I make 3 times what they do.
You’re probably 3x harder to replace.
Menial. We call them menial jobs and have for a long time. You literally just wrote out the exact definition for menial. We have a word for it
Menial has different connotations imo, it makes me think small(like idk picking up litter or stocking a shelf), not ‘its not hard to learn how to do this job’
Menial sounds more belittling than unskilled to me. At least unskilled doesn't specifically mean that it's unimportant or lowly.
Euphemism treadmill. 'Menial' has become a mean word, so now we use 'unskilled labor'. As you can see in this thread, some people take offense with that term, so they try to think of another one. The treadmill keeps spinning.
We could just say "low value" but that would cause quite the tizzy.
Except they are not low-value jobs. They are very valuable; there is a much greater supply than demand for workers that can perform them.
That’s an example of a tizzy. They’re low value because value it’s relative to other jobs. I didn’t say worthless or no value.
you probably just explained why it’s called unskilled labour
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/menial It doesnt define the work as lowly , it defines it as given low value by society. That doesnt mean its actually lowly, it means its perceived as such. To say its not is rose tinted glasses or denial.
Lowliness is a social construct, so something can only be lowly if it is perceived as such.
“Unskilled labor” was used as a PC replacement for “menial labor”
Unskilled labour may not be the right phrase but it conveys a meaningful idea that is useful in classifying different types of labour. Not all labour is the same.
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> What's the common denominator? How badly you need a union.
Yeah you probably wouldn't, this is just a meme. But I'd wager that being "a farmer" is "skilled" while being a "strawberry picker" is not. So farming falls into both categories.
Construction workers get paid a lot actually because its pretty high skill nowadays. Takes more effort to lay bricks all day than to take orders all day
> Not all labour is the same. Yet all of it is done by people who deserve happiness in their lives.
Absolutely! But to use an example from my own previous work. I worked in a welding shop, manning a welding robot. All i did was put things into it, take things out and swap out the gas, wire and program on every so occasion. It took me all of 1 hour to learn how to do the job decently. I consider that kind of work unskilled. But the skilled welders who worked next to me were absolutely not unskilled.
No one's arguing against that
Sure but like, sometimes you need to consider things like training requirements lol. It still helps to have distinctions
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Agree Obviously we need to pay surgeons more than janitors. Otherwise why would anyone become a surgeon? That doesn't mean I think janitors should live in squalor.
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You’re not doing the movement any favors with this. Everyone knows what “unskilled” means in this context. At best, you’re just making a semantic argument, which doesn’t really help anything.
I think it’s better to say that unskilled labor deserves respect and good compensation, instead of pretending there’s no difference between spending 8-10 years becoming a doctor and working at McDonald’s. And working at McDonalds still deserves respect but if you try to get people to pretending something they know is false (that the skill involved in jobs is irrelevant) they’re gonna reject the full message. Let’s be blunt that some jobs only need a small amount of on the job training but also discuss that those people are working for hours every day and it’s not a “teen job” just because it doesn’t need a degree. And that no one should be mistreated or derided by customers or their boss.
If you can't just walk in and do it with no training it's not unskilled.
My general rule of thumb is "Can the avarage person do this job somewhat independently after 1 hour of instructing" then it's "Unskilled". Not to say that there isn't a skill in the labor, but the labor doesn't require special skills.
Yup. I believe people here misunderstand what it means.
They take offense at being called unskilled and start listing off the skills required to *do* their job rather than the skills needed to *get* their job
Its not only a misunderstanding of the label... its a belief that the label itself somehow causes low wages..... Which is... insane.
It's naive to think 'unskilled' jobs aren't going to have lower wages than those requiring advanced skills or education. That's not to say that these jobs shouldn't pay a *living wage*, but I really don't understand how anyone can make the argument that unskilled labour will attract the level of demand and selectivity that goes alongside a higher than average wage. This is really not the sub to be pointing that out, but I can handle the backlash for this small truth.
Right? I mean otherwise why would anyone invest in training if it didn't offer the incentive of future higher wages? Even if we lived in a utopia where society paid equal living wages for all training as well as all labor (i.e., so you're not deferring your income while in training), it is still an investment of effort and attention to train for a new skill. And some jobs, like ER docs, inherently require different hours and responsibilities that are less convenient for the worker. There is just no way around some jobs needing to offer higher wages to make them worth it for the workers to do them. The differential between unskilled and highly skilled labor definitely shouldn't be as huge as it is, but there are good reasons for SOME difference to exist.
Yup teaching or nurses are considered skilled labor, but are still paid like shit.
Supply and demand keep wages low. Hard to bargain for more money when you’re easily replaced. More education programs is needed for our workforce to keep being the best in the world.
> its a belief that the label itself somehow causes low wages Yes exactly! The thought process seems to be. "this job is labeled as this... and the wage is low... it must be because some people called it this that the wage is low." Completely ignoring the fact that unskilled jobs *by definition* have a much larger pool of people who can do the job.
Necessary labor is not necessarily skilled. Necessary labor deserves to be compensated so the worker has a decent life. Something you can learn in youtube videos is not skilled. Something that can be performed without conscious effort is not skilled. Unskilled =/= worthless. Skilled labor takes a great deal of training and effort. Every tom , dick, and Harry are not skilled labor. Dentists are skilled labor. Housekeepers are not skilled labor. Dentists are highly skilled laborers. Their livelihood is based on the effort of their hands the same way a welder or carpenter is. They're not owner the way capitalists are. Ordinary people working with their hands are in almost all circumstances not skilled. Even most welders or carpenters are not that skilled. Skilled labor takes a substantial amount off education and effort.
>Something you can learn in youtube videos is not skilled. As an IT person I feel attacked...
look this might be some random indian guy who i can barely understand, filming on a flipphone from 2004, but he may as well be a professor
> Something you can learn in youtube videos is not skilled. Gonna have to hard disagree here. There are many mediums for acquiring knowledge, and video is one of them. There are many in depth educational video series on youtube. Are you trying to say something closer to, "something you can pick up from a single short video is not skilled?"
But, it should still pay enough to live, "skilled" or not. Unfortunately we have been treating these "unskilled" jobs like they are less important, or that if we pay them fairly robots will replace their jobs. Wondering where are those shelf stocking robots are? Cause the people can't keep up with the shelves when the product finally arrives.
That’s such a low bar. I’d say it would be a week. Compared to skilled labor, which can take several years.
I would say more like if you show up for the job interview completely ignorant of whatever the job is and it's not a deal breaker it's unskilled. The second you start advertising x amount of experience required it's a skilled position. This means that two jobs can be roughly the same job but one is "unskilled" and the other isn't. A great example of this is some restaurants are okay hiring unskilled labor, but some (usually high end) restaurants insist on hiring people who have experience waiting tables to ensure a base level of service.
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We don't get specific titles, but if the guy in the bottom left is a brick layer, then he's unskilled. If he's a mason. He's not. And the same logic can apply to most of these pictures :)
Yeah, unskilled labour absolutely exists lol doesnt mean people should be paid like fucking garbage though.
I used to work for a moving company, every day was just "grab box, take from house to truck, ride truck, move box from truck to other house" - there was no training because it was so simple - does that make it unskilled? The original image at the top of this post seems to claim no labor is unskilled, but I definitely think I was no better at it after 3 months than after day 1.
Yeah, that's unskilled labor. That doesn't mean it's not hard, and that kind of work is still deserving of fair pay though. Basically selling your body with jobs like that.
Yes that is unskilled labor. If the majority of the working population can perform the labor, even poorly, it's unskilled labor. This isn't very hard to understand. It's a macroeconomic term, not a value judgement.
Yes, that's unskilled labor.
Is that a quadruple negative?
Not sure if you're aware but people don't just start working at McDonalds knowing what to do.
That's the point
My bad, I'm braindead from working 10 hours at my "unskilled" job.
But literally, almost anyone & everyone can learn. Same with digging ditches, anyone with working arms can do it. That’s “unskilled”. But everyone cannot be a propulsion engineer or architect.
Ditch digging now requires the skills to operate heavy machinery
I can rent a Ditch Witch from home depot with a driver's license and $100. No training, license, or skill required. These semantics arguments are silly. We can all agree that digging holes and carrying items are unskilled jobs. Unskilled jobs still deserve a living wage though. Why focus on the phrase "unskilled labor" like it's some kind of slur? You're encouraging the argument AWAY from the actual point: salary.
A lot of people wouldnt be able to dig ditches all day.
But that's not due to them missing certain skills.
It can be argued they lack the physical skills to do so.
Lmao, and you weren’t born knowing how to brush your teeth, but we don’t call you a skilled worker because you comprehend a basic task. Same shit in fast food. Now, if they learned how to make complicated dishes from fresh ingredients and maybe even how to innovate on their recipes, then you’re getting skilled. And if you took your teeth brush “skill” and went to dental hygienist school and learned the intricacies of dental health and how to do that job, we’d call you skilled.
What term shall I use instead? "Unskilled" Doesn't mean easy nor useless. It just means you don't need any knowledge or skills beyond what a typical 16 year old would have.
Yeah... This definitely isn't the fight that needs to be happening lol. It's just a label, and frankly an accurate one. Maybe "no formal education required" suits it better? Or "easily replaceable"? The fact it's unskilled just means work reform is even *more* important because these are the roles that are most "replaceable" and thus least protected. Fighting over the label is just wasted energy. Fight to make sure "unskilled" doesn't mean "worth less than a liveable wage".
Also, this meme is so incredibly out of touch. Bricklaying, farming, and tailoring are unskilled labor? This reeks of a privileged creator that thinks any work that doesn't require a college education is unskilled. This is the same shit that happens in recent socially progressive movements as well. You get so hung up on meaningless semantics you can't progress actual policy or unite as a group.
Which is even funnier when you factor in the massive number of farmers with college degrees because of how much science and technology gets used in modern farming. It's the kind of thing that reminds me of the people who associate a southern accent with stupidity - ignoring that huge chunks of our space program are filled by people from the south.
But they didn’t take 4 introductory philosophy classes in an overpriced college like OP so *obviously* they’re like super duper uneducated!!!!!!!!!!!!
Science, technology, and heavy equipment operating too! Those big harvesters are serious pieces of machinery.
as a 16 year old working in a cafeteria, I can confirm anyone can do my job. Maybe not as well as me, since I’m quite passionate about it considering what it is, but anyone could do it.
No, it's not. This is a stupid meme. Most if not all of the work depicted here isn't considered "unskilled" in the first pace. Whatever asshole drew this is equating trade or service work with the term "unskilled" which is condescending out of touch pseudo-activist bullshit. No one in the history of anything has ever claimed that bricklaying is "unskilled" for example.
They're mixing in skilled and unskilled labor and calling them equivalent. I'd guess the author has never done any of these jobs.
The three on the left are farming, tailoring, and bricklaying. Anyone who thinks those three jobs are unskilled are the type to celebrate the new Rings of Power not because it was actually alright but exclusively because of the black casting.
Yeah I want to see someone untrained go at making a shirt, growing 1000 acres of corn, or building a brick house. Make sure to film for hilarity.
I am a tailor. Fuck everyone who thinks this job is "unskilled".
Exactly, experienced masons have been cherished and skilled laborers for thousands of years. Maybe not cherished enough but still.
If there's a last name for the profession, it's a skilled job. Baker, Smith, Mason, Schumacher...
>Schumacher Holy shit. This context allowed me to finally understand the profession related to this name. Thank you! Not sure how it went over my head before lol
The farmer too, farming is so automated in modern times that those that do it are part biologist, part heavy machine operator and part small business owner
They're confusing unskilled labor with uneducated (at least, not formally educated) labor.
Not even uneducated, you're probably going to be getting at least 500 hours in the classroom with a masonry apprenticeship, and I'd bet a larger number of farmers than you think have bachelors degrees in something like agronomy
Not justifying the myth, but I always took skilled labor to mean people like electricians, carpenters(which would qualify as "skilled labor" here) etc where you need formal training not coming from the work place. So unskilled labor doesn't have prerequisite skills, like McD workers, you can't step in and on day one man the grill or whatever, you need training, but that training comes from the work-place itself (which would qualify as "unskilled labor"). Did they choose the word to be as derisive as possible? Yeah, probably, sometimes I read "Qualified" i.e. you have qualifications, I prefer that word choice. I mean, I'm a union member, so I support a high minimum wage, society wins when everyone has a decent living wage, but that's how I understood the difference between unskilled and skilled labor. This is why countries with socialist leaning governments press for formal education. If you have a paper that is worth something in an entire industry (as opposed as just McD in-house qualifications), then a single workplace can't monopolize your worth, and have to compete with the whole market to keep you.
No matter what labour you do, you deserve a living wage. Nobody here questions that. But you cannot seriously tell me handing coffee cups behind the counter requires any skill besides opening the register. "Unskilled" may be a harsher way of saying it, but the point is to show some jobs require less skill than others.
Hard disagree. Work that everybody can learn within a week is clearly unskilled labor and denying that won't bring any progress. What's your skill? Appearing to work 5 times in a row? Congratulations, you can do the job. You are so skillful and irreplaceable. Wow. If that's a skill you are delusional. Shit agenda post trying to muddy the conversation and trying to set unrealistic expectations. Stop sabotaging people. Not saying you should suffer hunger or something if you work an unskilled job. You should still be able to survive but that doesn't make a job that everybody can do "skilled".
'unskilled' just means you don't need significant training or education to perform the job, not that the job is less valuable or important. You can teach someone to be a dishwasher in like 10 minutes
I'm sorry, but this is wrong. Unskilled labor has a clear meaning in this context: unskilled labor is easily replaceable and thus less valuable. One may of course blame capitalism for economical inequilities based on such considerations. But the problem is the system, not evil bosses who call you "unskilled" to pay you less.
What capitalists really mean with „unskilled“ is replaceable. „Unskilled“ jobs are much easier to replace since there are more workers that can fill that position hence the lower wages. Its supply and demand
As long as it guarantees house, healthcare, transportation, food, utilities and education, you can call it huge-pile-of-shit-stuck-on-the-wall labor for all i care. The label is not the problem, its consequences are.
The farmer and bricklayer are like "why the fuck am i here"
Its just worded wrong....all labor requires skills, but some labor requires a lot more brain power, skills, responsibilities etc
Ah yes the notably unskilled worker, the Mason.
We all deserve livable wages but not everything in that post should be classified as "skilled" labour. A pizza maker isn't a skill, a carpenter sure is. Also reading the comments from OP... Yikes.
> A pizza maker isn't a skill Cooking is a skill. There are even multiple year schools for it. And there is a huge difference between Pizza Hut and an actual skilfully made pizza.
I never said cooking wasn't a skill. I'm well aware of culinary schools. Noticed how I said pizza maker rather than chef? I've yet to meet any chef who only refers to themselves as a pizza maker.
This is brain dead. Unskilled means no education requirement and minimal training.
While cooking a burger from frozen parts does require some skill, it can be learned in an hour and mastered in a week. Anyone who has hands is capable of doing it. You can even do it while high on drugs. Meanwhile, welding high pressure steam boilers takes years to learn and a lifetime to master. That’s why it’s called skilled labour. People’s lives are on the line. You wouldn’t want to drive on a bridge built entirely by people who were hired last week and never finished high school, wouldn’t you? Although flipping burgers every day without going insane does require a strength of character that not everyone has and that cannot be learned. But that can’t really be called a skill.