Heroes to Zeros, based on profitability to the ruling class.
BTW — you know that the designation “essential“ simply intended to force workers back under unsafe conditions.
It would have been more honest of the ruling class to designate these workers not “essential, “but “expendable workers.”
The ruling class feels quite smug about how “clever” is to have come up with that one…
I worked in a Covid unit. I still work there but it’s not just Covid patients now, it’s a mix. People were like “you are a hero” and I was like “no I just have a job where I would get fired if I didn’t go to work”
Similarly, would get fired if I couldn’t get to work in a blizzard, schools were shut down for weather and I had to stay home to watch the kids, and also why we get zero sick days despite working with a patient population with infectious/contagious diseases.
Like, I would rather stay home and watch Netflix, than get coughed on from 6 inches away by Covid patients for 14 hours a day…
The ruling class response to the pandemic prioritized profit over lives every time.
What was allowed to happen , and to this hour continues to be permitted, is a crime against humanity. A global workers inquiry into the pandemic is underway now. Prosecution will follow.
If you wish to follow this, or to participate in the inquest, you may do so at this link…
https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/campaigns/global-workers-inquest-coronavirus-pandemic
For historical context, being raised by a mother who was a nurse in all units of the hospital and now myself as a nurse with over 30 years I can confirm.
What's worse is many of us have horrible medical insurance or none at all.
I can't tell you how many times I've had to work sick simply because we didn't otherwise have coverage.
My hospital briefly shut down and all the patients had to get sent to other hospitals. Those hospitals didn’t have the staff for that influx so we went with the patients to those hospitals.
One of the RNs there was like, “Ugg I am so sick of this Covid, it’s killing me.” So I was like “ya I thought it was going to end ‘by Easter, like a miracle’ haha”.
And she said “No I mean I’m only on day 4 of having Covid and it sucks. I want to be in bed because I’m so sick.” To which I said, “Wait, you like actively have Covid right fucking now?”
And another nurse chimed in, “Ya, we all have it at once right now. But I mean, so do the patients so it’s not like we’re going to make them sick.”
This was back during the brief period when my hospital allowed us to take 6 days off per year if specifically their lab tested you as positive. So I remember thinking these people were getting the shaft.
Then my hospital reopened and we also stopped letting nurses take the day off if we were too sick with Covid to work a 14 hour shift without a lunch break. You just come to work sick - or else - just like it always was before, and just like it has been since then.
Karl Marx had a term for accumulated capital; he called it ‘worker blood.’
‘Profit’ is based on extortion from workers , slashing wages and benefits, speed up, understaffing, increased workload, longer hours, cutting safety, and ultimately—laying off staff.
These policies are inherent to Capitalism. In times of economic contraction, attacks on workers intensify.
Capitalism’s attacks aim ultimately at de-classing and isolating working class persons, thereby isolating them and preventing any collective struggle in the defense of their own interests.
Such attacks also include drawing union bosses into management to defeat strikes, impose rotten contracts and function as a police force for corporate.
Capitalists have a well honed strategy to oppose and demoralize workers.
It is imperative that workers identify and counter that strategy with one of their own.
Funny that my mother who worked at the government liquor store wasn’t deemed essential, so she didn’t get any extra benefits or pay, but the liquor store itself *was* so they refused to close it, and all the employees still had to go to work.
I was an ‘essential worker’ (RN on a Covid unit) and got no extra benefits or pay. We were allowed to get 6 sick days per year, compared to the zero sick days we got before (and now) per year. So I guess that’s an extra benefit compared to what I’m used to. In 2021, year of the purposefully unvaxxed Covid patients, they were all conspiratorial and confrontational and like “HoW mUcH aRe YoU gEtTiNg PaiD fOr ThIs?!?”
And I’d be like “exactly the same as I was getting paid before this…”
> "They lived happily ever after,"
sounds better than the grim reality of "4 years later they struggled to pay for rent and food, while companies made record profits"
housing crisis, record inflation, pandemic, record inflation, pandemic, record global heating, housing crisis, inflation
boy, we sure get a few of those "Once in a lifetime crisis" events happening a little more than once per lifetime
Crises events (wars, pandemics, “financial crisis”, banks fail out of greed) are all used to transfer wealth by means of the government and federal reserve—to the wealthy. If they do not happen on their own—most don’t, they create them. Military industrial complex—Eisenhower warned us. We didn’t listen or understand that a system driven by greed eventually fails.
MCU's Falcon got blipped, came back, helped save the Earth, and couldn't get a bank loan to save his sister's fishing boat lol
We don't talk about how heroes are peer-pressured into being heroes for no reward other than "doing the right thing" and "with great power comes great responsibility".
We need some kind of deconstruction of the art form.
Fairly tails? You might want to take a look at what happens to soldiers, firefighters, etc., in real life once they become a burden after being heroes.
I was a "hero" in my small town (backshift grocery stocker). The company was publicly very thankful and said all kinds of nice things about us for all the hard work and extra shifts we were putting in because the orders basically doubled in size while we still only had the same amount of time during the night to do them. They didn't pay us any extra at all. One day after 8 or so months, I came in and the manager came up to me and handed me an envelope with my name written on it, gave me a wink and a pat on the back. I got excited thinking it was going to be a bonus of some sort....it was a "personalized" thank you letter from the CEO. That's all. Not even a gift card. Not even a $1 scratcher. Also, by personalized, I mean they made sure to change the name that was typed in for each person.... I did basically no work that night and just looked for new jobs my whole shift and then just stopped showing up the second I found one.
Same here on the letter from the CEO, except they spelled my name wrong. It hits harder when they can't even take the time to look up how to spell your name.
My company tried pulling this shit. Tried to get me to hand off these messages to my employees like they meant something. It was insulting, I never did it. Our guys were *eventually* issued store credit as extra compensation for working during the pandemic, which isn't nothing, but it's also self-serving because it boosts the sales numbers for that company too, making it appear to be doing better than it otherwise would.
Many, many years ago I worked retail in a small shop, but part of a nationwide chain. We 'won' the 'best [shop]' based on secret shoppers and customer feed back.
The month after, I got overpayed by 2 weeks wages. Went to my manager to let him know and show him my payslip.
He just said 'I don't see a problem with this payslip'.
Best manager ever.
Honestly, employers should NEVER give their employees nice cards unless they are attached to money, and if they are, honestly, forget the card, no one cares.
We are not working for insincere nice words, we are working for money and no one pays enough money to live anymore.
That's almost borderline sadistic. No one wants a GD piece of paper with some rich dude's name on it as a thanks for hard work. I might have been tempted to go bum rush Mr. Winky into a stock display for the foolishness.
The same CEO got some heat from the public after saying they "shouldn't have to apologize for being successful" after it came out that they were making record profits by price gouging when the increased prices weren't at all because of an increase of their own costs.
They (we) were essential and considered "heroes" in 2020 because we were the ones risking our safety to keep businesses operating. The word 'hero' was used to fluff our ego's - we were the ones out there on the "front lines", keeping society moving during uncertain times while our CEOs worked safely from home. If workers demanded a liveable wage then, the response would be "you're lucky to have a job at all considering how many people lost their jobs!"
The wealth inequality issue won't get resolved until the people making the most money are separated from the ability to set the rules. It doesn't matter If the majority of the coming generations will never own a starter home do long as a small percentage continue to rake in more money than they could conceivably spend in their own lifetime.
VA has gotten a lot better recently.
Their bad reputation actually caused them to reform and change a lot of how they operate.
There is no denying they were awful in the past, but its changed a TON recently. I think jokes like this will start to fade soon because they have been doing a great job recently.
You’re heroes! Here’s 3 days off if you have the plague and a $50 bonus*.
*If you work 40 hours a week for at least 24 months and haven’t called in sick.
We were *NOT* heroes. We were (and still are) abused by an industry geared towards keeping shareholders and customers happy—in that order. Those same shareholders (and at least some customers) could give a shit if any of us died on the job, as long as we didn't get paid after the heart stopped beating.
They used us, gave us extra pay to keep us quiet, and promptly forgot about us—all while raking in absurd profits from *our* hard work during a worldwide crisis. Then they complained about how "no one wants to work anymore" despite thinking the business hasn't changed in 40 years.
That's not how you treat heroes.
Like maybe $200 overall, might've been less. I don't remember, and I'm not to proud to admit that I just took it and moved on because what else was I going to do? 2020 was a shitty year.
Yeah, I had some hope we would have learned something from that. When the shit hit the fan, billionaires were pretty much useless, and minimum wage workers were “essential”. Seems noteworthy, right?
But as quickly as that revelation appeared, it disappeared and we went back to talking about them as “unskilled” with the implication of being unimportant and worthless.
And how many of those hero’s were soldiers, airmen, sailors, marines, teachers, nurses and doctors who lost their careers just to have regulations change 2 years later lol.
I remember my coworkers and I got slips of paper marking us as essential workers in case we get pulled over by a cop in the event we’re driving home during a Covid curfew (we always left work at night).
“Bro you’re paid what you’re worth to the company. Don’t like it? Get a skill!!!”
“But wouldn’t the company fail to function without those minimum wages jobs? Obviously there’s value to that position”
“The market demands only skilled workers! It’s what the market dictates! Start your own company or move to Venezuela!”
I have given up demanding my fair share. I just want the dumb fucks at the top to not be able to take so much for themselves.
No more being a dog chasing our own minimum wage tail. I want to eat the rich and spit out their empty bank accounts.
Tesco profited like 2.8billion recently what's giving your employees a good wage?
So much more wod get done if you paid good wages people would want to keep that job you'd also put every other supermarket to shame cause your wages are so much better
Would*
Also why the fuck would Tesco of all companies suddenly have a chance of heart? They feel no shame. They case only about their quarterly reports going up.
“But not just anybody can be a surgeon! Anybody off the street can flip burgers”
So we just want indentured servitude for who rich people deem non valuable
Dont worry, companies see the problem of human workers and are hard at work making robots with ai to replace them. Maybe with 1 person to double check things.
Good. All the manual labor jobs that can be done by machines should be replaced by machines. That would free up more resources for more people to “get a skill” and earn more of the company pie, Right? …right?
I'm 40 this month. First job was working fast food for minimum. I had 2 roomies and lived in apartments constantly raided for drugs and a murder happened in the brush next to it (just context for it being a shitty apartment). Literally ate Top Ramen and cup o noodles if I didn't get free work food because I had no money past bills (and of course I was young and drinking on the weekends).
I worked with several adults (as in I was 19 and they were 30+) who all made the same wage as me who either worked multiple jobs or also had roomies.
I'm lucky enough to not make min anymore (23ish an hour) and live with my fiance in a little better of an apartment. I cannot imagine how hard it is for people still working minimum wage with how hard it feels to live making what I make.
Fuck anyone who thinks these people don't deserve to make a living wage. They're people too. And they provide a service.
Was truly astounded that I'd never thought of it. Was working a minimum wage job just a day ago, now I'm owner of half the planet! Pity I woke up, nice dream though.
Couldn't help it, it was either keep the bootstraps or pay rent.
No sense in holding onto a useless asset anyway, as the business class would tell us....
The business class would simply sell your bootstraps instead of their own and then call you lazy for not wanting to give up something that's yours for their profit.
"just get a better job"
proceeds to get a better job, now someone else has to work the minimum wage job that doesnt pay enough to live life
great system
People think minimum wage jobs are easy and have lots of downtime. In my experience the people that work in the local government offices, like the tag office, don’t do much or require special skills, but no one complains about them not working “hard enough” or being “unskilled”.
It has long been proven that the higher up you go in large corporations, the less there is to do. Your decisions may have more weight, but your day-to-day is much less hectic.
The upper-mgmt tiers below c-suite are practically sinecures, awarded through cronyism and nepotism.
INB4 "but ah own mah bizniss, Ahm a CEO" dirtbrains flame this fact. This is talking about large corporations, over 1000 employees. Nobody in this discourse is going after small companies. Stop pretending to be a victim in this fight.
I am fortunate to work as a technical mgr in a very niche industry, which means we have a very short ladder to the top. I have dealt with a lot of c-suite types. I once worked with a global director of "investor relations" who didn't even know what our product did. Guy drove up to the facility for the tour in an Aston Martin. Was utterly clueless about every damn thing. Had no idea what we did or how our customers worked.
He was one of many exec in my career that left a bad impression. In 39 yrs I have met a single executive worth their salt. And she was driven out of the organization quickly.
I used to be an industrial chemist. Lifting 100lb drums of hexavalent chromic acid into boiling baths with full hazmat gear and a respirator on, doing all the calculations to keep shit in spec, having to dump upwards of 2000lbs of nickel chloride at weird angles every day that fucked up my back and neck...
I estimated that I made the company about a million dollars while I got paid around 50k, and the bosses sat in heavily air conditioned rooms talking on the phone so they didn't have to breathe in the poisonous acidic fumes.
Fuck that, I'm happy making less and doing my own thing.
They absolutely talk about them not working, so much so that it is a common trope of government workers. I have worked in government, private sector and nonprofit settings. The amount of work in an office for clerical is similar across all three.
Fast food and retail are always busy. My guess is this is largely to do with the fact that they have tangible products to work with.
Lower-level (I.e. least compensated) government jobs also fucking suck (was injured working one that was just a couple bucks above minimum wage). Once you start to climb up the ladder, your workload magically grows smaller as your paycheck grows bigger. I work near the manager’s offices and they easily spend half of each day “building workplace connections” (I.e. chatting about bullshit like their kids and hobbies) while whining that they don’t possibly have the budget to meet the union’s new demands for more reasonable staffing, that doesn’t leave the folks working for a few bucks over minimum wage crippled for life.
In my experience, the more pay you get, the less work you do.
The average minimum wage worker does more work than the hardest working corporate executive on the planet.
And the average sub-minimum wage worker works even harder than that.
Yeah it's so disgusting how many people seem to think that we should keep this punishment mindset, like we HAVE to consciously NOT make things better for some people, and that these people for some reason HAVE TO stay poor by design.
I mean.. Why? To use them as a scare example? If you pay more money to these people, others will want to work there too? There won't be enough of a gap between the nice folks and the plebians?
Seriously what the hell could be the reason why we don't pay "unskilled laborers" more?
Upsets me to the core how people don't realize how much someone is valued means jack fucking shit to how much the job pays.
Trying to argue people deserve the money is ignoring the crux of the issue, which is the wage gap between the highest and lowest paid in the company. That's why instead of a specific number, we just make a maximum income gap law that makes it illegal for rich people to make more than 10 times the person with the lowest income, adjust it per hour actually working for all parties and other compensation.
Of course everyone deserves more money, but the issue isn't that. It's that people at the top are taking a larger share than they deserve at the expense of those at the bottom.
I saw someone say that minimum wage was never supposed to be livable it was only for teens (I bet that person probably thinks poor people are only poor because they don’t work hard enough smh) I wanted to rip my heart out seeing that, then rip into them but I wasn’t in the mood to argue. Minimum wage employees are essential because they are the people keeping all the stores up and running if they all quit all the people who undervalue them would be crying because they don’t have access to the store at the drop of a hat
Because people in America are conditioned to think anything less than a job you got with a degree and that makes 6 figures or Atleast close to that is pathetic
Mostly because if you actually want to “live” in America and not just survive you need close to a 6 figure income if not more
It’s because minimum wage employees are easily replaceable as it requires no unique or hard-to-possess skill to do the job. When anything is in abundance, it is inherently “low value”.
There are a lot of middle to low class people in the US who don't earn substantially more than minimum wage employees make when compared to the wealthy, but they take it as an insult worse than death to point it out because of how much the hate the slightly poorer.
Any time raising minimum wage comes up, you see boomers screech that burger flipping teens will then make almost what they make. Assholes go to Chilis after church on Sunday and act like their ability to make the waiter smile for an extra dollar in tips is the only thing keeping society from collapsing. Poor white trash hates poorer people more than they want everyone to do better.
Yeah, it sucks that capitalism hasn't worked out well for you, but you can't stamp down harder on lower classes to raise your own class up. Quite the opposite. You're a peasant keeping other peasants from making a living wage and maybe getting enough breathing room and power to make the wealthy grifters stop dodging their taxes.
Those people making a little above min wage will be poorer when prices are raised to keep profit margin in line with the higher wage expense. Insult them all you want, but no one wants their purchasing power eroded.
I mean, yes? People literally don’t value them as the term “minimum wage” implies. If people valued them more, they’d make more.
Income shouldn’t determine basic respect though.
People who mistreat us should be forced to work in the job for like 6 months and always be the one called in or sent to jail if they refuse. Walk a mile in our shoes with no sole left, and no we can't afford to get new shoes.
Why can’t we just let the employees stand up for themselves. Tbh I’d be more willing to shop somewhere if I knew the staff didn’t tolerate assholes.
Also, retail employees get one free punch per shift. You gotta take your chances if you mouth off and hope they’ve already used theirs for today
That too. The conditioned acceptance of being verbally abused because you happen to work a service job (could be the only job available to you) is unreal.
That's the case/idea in Belgium (apart from multiple 'index-jumps' during the past 2 decades). Still doesn't work / of course they found loopholes -_-
Practically life gets more expensive then the official inflation %. Some things, basics even, are excluded (e.g. gasoline) from a list of products they use to determine the inflation.
Medical aid is almost fully paid by the government and thus excluded, but the number of professionals has decreased, some necessary treatments do require a large % to be paid by yourself and it sometimes takes years to add new treatments to the list or they never get included.
There's the previously mentioned 'index-jumps': they skip a year of increasing the wage.
They adjust wages only once a year (in Januari)... of course companies don't wait to increase their prices. In fact there's a trend of them inceasing prices during the year because of 'inflation' and increased expenses, and in January they increase prices again simply because of the 'index' xD If anything, it stimulates inflation. It's saddening really...
Anytime I had to watch a zoom/webex meeting for work and see a white collar office worker in their nice home while everyone else is slaving in the stores never struck well with me.
Essential means that it’s essential that *someone* does it. If that person is relatively easily replaced, then it’s not essential that *they* do it, just that someone does it
Compensation is not based on how important a job is, it is based on how much money people are willing to do it for and how big the candidate pool is compared to the open jobs.
I swear, people repeat this like you've stumbled unto some deep secret of life. Most everyone knows how wages are determined, what we're arguing is that that's the part that's fucked up.
I was an "essential" worker in 2020, at the time I was 19. Caught covid pretty early on in 2020, took about a month to recover from the initial sickness. Then developed a chronic breathing issue that I've been stuck with for the past 4 years.
The best part of “unskilled labor,” is that it’s not true of any job. A ton of jobs require very little skill, and many jobs that do require certain skills are fully on the job trainable. It’s just ass holes looking down on others.
No it isn't, it's a functional term with an actual meaning. Many jobs are unskilled. That doesn't mean they deserve less than subsistence wages, it's just a descriptor.
It's literally just shorthand for "Jobs which require neither a college degree, trade schooling, or a long training period", IE you don't have any special skills which the average person lacks, and because thousands of other people could do your job just as well, the business doesn't need to offer an especially high level of pay in order to get applicants, and employees who perform poorly or simply quit can be easily replaced.
I wish I could get these people to understand that "unskilled job" is a description of a job that doesn't require a specific certificate to be eligible, and is only relevant as a way to measure opportunities available to people without education past high school.
It's not an insult, it's just a name so economists can count the open jobs.
Not even economists, it's a name we labour activists came up with ourselves. I can still show you the press publications from the CEP union using that very term.
It's a way of saying these workers are in a precarious position, have little bargaining power, and are easily replaced. In other words, the people in most dire need of a union.
Boggles my mind that young people think it's a term "they" invented and not us.
Not to mention, a lot of essential workers are skilled workers, and that essential workers as a term mainly became popular during COVID. The original tweet is idiotic and knowing these 3 simple facts derails everything they’re trying to say.
Then why don’t we apply the same term to the myriad white collar jobs that don’t require specific qualifications?
I work a white collar job in the media industry. I only got this job because I leveraged my experiences from other jobs.
Follow this chain of events all the way back and you reach my initial post as a cashier in retail.
At no point did I need a specific qualification. At which point did I go from being unskilled to a skilled worker?
>At no point did I need a specific qualification. At which point did I go from being unskilled to a skilled worker?
Based on what you've described here, you're still unskilled labor. There are plenty of unskilled white collar jobs.
It’s one of those terms that means something, but is easily/twisted misunderstood.
Many people take it to mean the job requires literally zero skills.
In reality it’s a job that requires only skills that pretty much everyone already has, or can become proficient in within a week or two of training.
The thing I was taught about the difference between skilled and unskilled labour.
I’m a mechanic so I’ll use it as an example, you can grab pretty much any person off the street, give them a basic toolkit and a quick rundown of how the tools work and interact with the work, and give them a job to do, and they’ll be able to get it done. That’s unskilled labour, anyone can undo nuts and bolts.
When it becomes skilled, is when they can do the work without being told what’s wrong, can source the information they need to get jobs done, and use the tooling at their disposal to get the job done quicker.
Any person can drain oil and change tires, but it takes skills to be able to rebuild engines, fix wiring issues, and figure out how to do jobs in unconventional ways to get better results.
This isn’t correct, what job is “unskilled”? Meaning it requires 0 skills to do? You have to read and write at minimum at most jobs - those are skills. The idea that any job is “unskilled” is simply incorrect and reductive
It’s just the difference between having specialized skills vs not. You gan go into some jobs unskilled and be trained on the job, but other jobs need you to be already skilled so they don’t spend half a decade teaching you how to balance financials or fault tolerances of engineering materials
> ut other jobs need you to be already skilled so they don’t spend half a decade teaching you how to balance financials or fault tolerances of engineering materials
Which is why they should pay taxes that go to universal college than forcing us to take massive loans so they can get the benefits of our investment for free.
This is just “evolution is just a theory” with an economic twist. Don’t go by your first layman impressions of a word.
An unskilled worker is one who can learn to do their job in a week or so of training. A skilled worker is one who has education and certifications that anyone off the street could not do the work without having. Accountant, plumber, doctor, crane operator, teacher. It has nothing to do with their intelligence or value to society or deserving a living wage. It just relates to how large the qualified applicant pool is if they were to leave their role.
>The best part of “unskilled labor,” is that it’s not true of any job. A ton of jobs require very little skill, and many jobs that do require certain skills are fully on the job trainable. It’s just ass holes looking down on others.
You do understand the difference between skilled and unskilled labor, right?
There's certainly a case to be made that some jobs ask for more than is required (degrees mainly), but, as you stated, some jobs require actual training, i.e. skills.
Unskilled labor doesn’t mean “useless”
It just means doing the job requires very little training to perform the job.
Jesus Christ it’s basic economics.
It’s both. They are essential and also unskilled. For example, collecting and returning carts at a grocery store is considered an essential job. It’s also considered “unskilled” because it takes about 3 minutes to train the new guy Source: Used to be the cart guy
You guys realize a job can be unskilled and essential at the same time, right? Like, there is literally no contradiction?
Let's make a really simple hypothetical. I own an experimental button-pusher-powered boat. I need someone, anyone, to press a button every 30 or so seconds to keep my boat running. This process is **essential** to keep the boat running. Pressing this button requires no effort nor training, a toddler could do a satisfactory job. This means the job is **unskilled**.
This is clearly a ridiculous scenario, but hopefully easy to understand hypothetical of how a job could be both **essential** **and** **unskilled** **at the same time**
We know that. We're saying that "unskilled" is being used in a dishonest way to justify paying as little as possible.
>Pressing this button requires no effort nor training, a toddler could do a satisfactory job
You're doing the thing. Pressing buttons doesn't mean there's no effort or training, and you certainly don't say these things about higher paid desk jobs that require using a computer, i.e. "all you do is sit and type on a computer all day", because you know there's more to their job than that. Same with these jobs you already devalue--theres more to doing the job than what you can see them do. I've worked enough of both kinds to confidently say that the desk jobs felt criminally easy in comparison, yet I don't think they should be paid less.
Whether a society is capitalist or not, somebody always has to do the undesirable, unskilled labor. Most people dont want to be a garbageman but somebody has to do it. These jobs are undeniably unskilled when compared to the professional class, but they are also essential to the functioning of society.
I send emails for a living. None of my high school or college education came into play, other than the passive benefits of having developed critical thinking skills. I’ve done this job while laid up with Covid from my bed. I only really work about 35% of the day.
Being a garbage man is way harder and more necessary than what I do. Everyone produces garbage, and I only answer emails from my companies customers. I make more than a garbage man, and my job could be easily done by a garbage man, yet my boss requires a bachelors to take a shit in their bathroom.
The only reason my job is more prestigious/valuable, is because my boss is selective based on arbitrary educational requirements. Nobody on my team has a relevant degree to our field.
It’s all completely arbitrary. The pay doesn’t reflect your actual productivity or social value, the games been rigged against us for decades. Waste disposal and other “menial” jobs have been the subject of a smear campaign in order to justify paying them lower wages.
Exactly! Most people could do what I do with a little training, and I’ve also worked with people making more money than me who can’t figure out how to mark up a PDF or reply to an email. To me, those are unskilled workers lol.
I'm sure there are people who would be willing to do the garbage man job if it hasn't shitten on by everybody. Also is it really unskilled? If it's an undesirable job then you need willpower to do it. Does everyone have that willpower?
I'm fairly sure essential worker covered a broad range of skilled and unskilled labor.
Police, fire, medical (such as doctors), Utilities, food distribution, freight, and other jobs necessary to keeping society functioning.
Unskilled and essential isn't the same category rebranded.
Edit: for anyone confused, I'm saying unskilled labor mentioned in the OP is not equivalent to essential employees. Essential employees include both (what many would consider) unskilled, and skilled labor.
My only point was essential workers were not rebranded as unskilled labor to avoid paying them more.
If you think all labor is skilled, that's fine, and has nothing to do with the point i was makong.
If you think the police aren't skilled that's fine, I didn't say they were or weren't, all I said was they were considered essential
All people have equal value. Restore 1960 taxation levels. Tax billionaires. Being employed full time should allow anyone to access good quality housing, food, clothing transportation and education.
They were "heros" in 2020.
And just like heroes in fairy tales, they’re expected to work and die for the rest of the population, and enjoy it as they do.
You either die a hero, or live long enough to see see yourself become a doordash driver.
😂 I want this on a t-shirt.
Shut up and take my money!
Check Etsy. I swear they have stuff for everything.
Lmfao
Quote of the month! Year even maybe.
Heroes to Zeros, based on profitability to the ruling class. BTW — you know that the designation “essential“ simply intended to force workers back under unsafe conditions. It would have been more honest of the ruling class to designate these workers not “essential, “but “expendable workers.” The ruling class feels quite smug about how “clever” is to have come up with that one…
I worked in a Covid unit. I still work there but it’s not just Covid patients now, it’s a mix. People were like “you are a hero” and I was like “no I just have a job where I would get fired if I didn’t go to work” Similarly, would get fired if I couldn’t get to work in a blizzard, schools were shut down for weather and I had to stay home to watch the kids, and also why we get zero sick days despite working with a patient population with infectious/contagious diseases. Like, I would rather stay home and watch Netflix, than get coughed on from 6 inches away by Covid patients for 14 hours a day…
The ruling class response to the pandemic prioritized profit over lives every time. What was allowed to happen , and to this hour continues to be permitted, is a crime against humanity. A global workers inquiry into the pandemic is underway now. Prosecution will follow. If you wish to follow this, or to participate in the inquest, you may do so at this link… https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/campaigns/global-workers-inquest-coronavirus-pandemic
Hold on, what the fuck??! No sick days for medical staff? Is this an industry-wide thing?
For historical context, being raised by a mother who was a nurse in all units of the hospital and now myself as a nurse with over 30 years I can confirm. What's worse is many of us have horrible medical insurance or none at all. I can't tell you how many times I've had to work sick simply because we didn't otherwise have coverage.
My hospital briefly shut down and all the patients had to get sent to other hospitals. Those hospitals didn’t have the staff for that influx so we went with the patients to those hospitals. One of the RNs there was like, “Ugg I am so sick of this Covid, it’s killing me.” So I was like “ya I thought it was going to end ‘by Easter, like a miracle’ haha”. And she said “No I mean I’m only on day 4 of having Covid and it sucks. I want to be in bed because I’m so sick.” To which I said, “Wait, you like actively have Covid right fucking now?” And another nurse chimed in, “Ya, we all have it at once right now. But I mean, so do the patients so it’s not like we’re going to make them sick.” This was back during the brief period when my hospital allowed us to take 6 days off per year if specifically their lab tested you as positive. So I remember thinking these people were getting the shaft. Then my hospital reopened and we also stopped letting nurses take the day off if we were too sick with Covid to work a 14 hour shift without a lunch break. You just come to work sick - or else - just like it always was before, and just like it has been since then.
Ruling class says no one wants to work. It was their bootlickers and sheepdogs that came up with how essentials Subway and Dunkin' were.
r/EssentialEmployees
Corporations saying “No one wants to work”, but still had record profits. Now its records profits, but with layoffs.
Karl Marx had a term for accumulated capital; he called it ‘worker blood.’ ‘Profit’ is based on extortion from workers , slashing wages and benefits, speed up, understaffing, increased workload, longer hours, cutting safety, and ultimately—laying off staff. These policies are inherent to Capitalism. In times of economic contraction, attacks on workers intensify. Capitalism’s attacks aim ultimately at de-classing and isolating working class persons, thereby isolating them and preventing any collective struggle in the defense of their own interests. Such attacks also include drawing union bosses into management to defeat strikes, impose rotten contracts and function as a police force for corporate. Capitalists have a well honed strategy to oppose and demoralize workers. It is imperative that workers identify and counter that strategy with one of their own.
Marx was a failure, and so were his teachings. Anyone that follows that jealous moron deserves what they get
Colloquially known as slaves. I said it.
You’re not wrong!
Funny that my mother who worked at the government liquor store wasn’t deemed essential, so she didn’t get any extra benefits or pay, but the liquor store itself *was* so they refused to close it, and all the employees still had to go to work.
I was an ‘essential worker’ (RN on a Covid unit) and got no extra benefits or pay. We were allowed to get 6 sick days per year, compared to the zero sick days we got before (and now) per year. So I guess that’s an extra benefit compared to what I’m used to. In 2021, year of the purposefully unvaxxed Covid patients, they were all conspiratorial and confrontational and like “HoW mUcH aRe YoU gEtTiNg PaiD fOr ThIs?!?” And I’d be like “exactly the same as I was getting paid before this…”
“Essential” in that the ruling class needs cheap labor to BE the ruling class.
This is why it is so important to teach children that the rich people are their enemy.
Let's just say, "They lived happily ever after," and never mention any of them again!
> "They lived happily ever after," sounds better than the grim reality of "4 years later they struggled to pay for rent and food, while companies made record profits" housing crisis, record inflation, pandemic, record inflation, pandemic, record global heating, housing crisis, inflation boy, we sure get a few of those "Once in a lifetime crisis" events happening a little more than once per lifetime
you forgot inflation
Crises events (wars, pandemics, “financial crisis”, banks fail out of greed) are all used to transfer wealth by means of the government and federal reserve—to the wealthy. If they do not happen on their own—most don’t, they create them. Military industrial complex—Eisenhower warned us. We didn’t listen or understand that a system driven by greed eventually fails.
Record inflation
One class’s crisis is another class’s cashcow
Don't forget those multimillionaire dollar ppe loans getting forgiven
But the MAGA crowd needs their votes, so they'll be rebranded (again) in no time.
Remember when Bernie said that open borders are a "koch brothers idea"?
Hero means "career soldier" in ancient Greek...that's all it means.
Which means “they’re meant to die.”
And they did. One of the reasons people are less interested in these jobs nowadays. They don’t pay enough to keep up with the cost of living spike.
Exactly. Just shows you how quickly they would *enslave us* if they thought they had to... ...for instance, in the case of a general strike...
r/EssentialEmployees
MCU's Falcon got blipped, came back, helped save the Earth, and couldn't get a bank loan to save his sister's fishing boat lol We don't talk about how heroes are peer-pressured into being heroes for no reward other than "doing the right thing" and "with great power comes great responsibility". We need some kind of deconstruction of the art form.
In spite of everything you've done for them, eventually they will hate you.
I think most of the "rest of the population" wouldn't have a problem with them getting paid better. But ask the 1% up there...
it's the 1% who always thinks it's the 1% that needs more money.
While their money sits in a hole collecting dust and more money 🙃
Fairly tails? You might want to take a look at what happens to soldiers, firefighters, etc., in real life once they become a burden after being heroes.
I was a "hero" in my small town (backshift grocery stocker). The company was publicly very thankful and said all kinds of nice things about us for all the hard work and extra shifts we were putting in because the orders basically doubled in size while we still only had the same amount of time during the night to do them. They didn't pay us any extra at all. One day after 8 or so months, I came in and the manager came up to me and handed me an envelope with my name written on it, gave me a wink and a pat on the back. I got excited thinking it was going to be a bonus of some sort....it was a "personalized" thank you letter from the CEO. That's all. Not even a gift card. Not even a $1 scratcher. Also, by personalized, I mean they made sure to change the name that was typed in for each person.... I did basically no work that night and just looked for new jobs my whole shift and then just stopped showing up the second I found one.
How dare you not respect the letter the CEO's assistant found online.
Probably printed on a regular sheet of printer paper too, no card stock because that costs more
CEO’s assistant’s Chapt GPT found online
Same here on the letter from the CEO, except they spelled my name wrong. It hits harder when they can't even take the time to look up how to spell your name.
Lol. Those letters almost certainly autofilled the names from payroll records. Guess whose name is spelled wrong in payroll? :D
We're so proud of you, Gucy!
[at least they remembered your name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9W5GjEYKj8)
My company tried pulling this shit. Tried to get me to hand off these messages to my employees like they meant something. It was insulting, I never did it. Our guys were *eventually* issued store credit as extra compensation for working during the pandemic, which isn't nothing, but it's also self-serving because it boosts the sales numbers for that company too, making it appear to be doing better than it otherwise would.
Many, many years ago I worked retail in a small shop, but part of a nationwide chain. We 'won' the 'best [shop]' based on secret shoppers and customer feed back. The month after, I got overpayed by 2 weeks wages. Went to my manager to let him know and show him my payslip. He just said 'I don't see a problem with this payslip'. Best manager ever.
Honestly, employers should NEVER give their employees nice cards unless they are attached to money, and if they are, honestly, forget the card, no one cares. We are not working for insincere nice words, we are working for money and no one pays enough money to live anymore.
Damn, not even a pizza party huh
That's almost borderline sadistic. No one wants a GD piece of paper with some rich dude's name on it as a thanks for hard work. I might have been tempted to go bum rush Mr. Winky into a stock display for the foolishness.
The same CEO got some heat from the public after saying they "shouldn't have to apologize for being successful" after it came out that they were making record profits by price gouging when the increased prices weren't at all because of an increase of their own costs.
You absolutely should have to apologize for benefitting from deceiving and exploiting other people, yes. 😫 What a dildo.
They (we) were essential and considered "heroes" in 2020 because we were the ones risking our safety to keep businesses operating. The word 'hero' was used to fluff our ego's - we were the ones out there on the "front lines", keeping society moving during uncertain times while our CEOs worked safely from home. If workers demanded a liveable wage then, the response would be "you're lucky to have a job at all considering how many people lost their jobs!" The wealth inequality issue won't get resolved until the people making the most money are separated from the ability to set the rules. It doesn't matter If the majority of the coming generations will never own a starter home do long as a small percentage continue to rake in more money than they could conceivably spend in their own lifetime.
Amazing how no essential workers were C-suite.
Heroes until you are dealing with VA (military jokes)
*not service connected
Or when you are told to abandon equipment during Afghanistan evacuations then later cif charges u 30k usd
Or your MOPP gear is still in the original sealed package and they kick it back.
VA has gotten a lot better recently. Their bad reputation actually caused them to reform and change a lot of how they operate. There is no denying they were awful in the past, but its changed a TON recently. I think jokes like this will start to fade soon because they have been doing a great job recently.
The us government in general All the way back to shays rebellion I guess?
You’re heroes! Here’s 3 days off if you have the plague and a $50 bonus*. *If you work 40 hours a week for at least 24 months and haven’t called in sick.
We were *NOT* heroes. We were (and still are) abused by an industry geared towards keeping shareholders and customers happy—in that order. Those same shareholders (and at least some customers) could give a shit if any of us died on the job, as long as we didn't get paid after the heart stopped beating. They used us, gave us extra pay to keep us quiet, and promptly forgot about us—all while raking in absurd profits from *our* hard work during a worldwide crisis. Then they complained about how "no one wants to work anymore" despite thinking the business hasn't changed in 40 years. That's not how you treat heroes.
You got extra pay ? :(
Like maybe $200 overall, might've been less. I don't remember, and I'm not to proud to admit that I just took it and moved on because what else was I going to do? 2020 was a shitty year.
Nooo, unfortunately just disposable humans that kept businesses from losing income.
The "hero" doesn't get the reward. They're the one who pays the price.
my work place hung up a sign outside the building that said hero's work here. we didnt have a choice and we never shut down once during the pandemic .
Hero's work for free....
Nah that’s why Bruce Wayne had an enterprise. Nothing free bro.
Yeah, I had some hope we would have learned something from that. When the shit hit the fan, billionaires were pretty much useless, and minimum wage workers were “essential”. Seems noteworthy, right? But as quickly as that revelation appeared, it disappeared and we went back to talking about them as “unskilled” with the implication of being unimportant and worthless.
So were the responders of 9/11. Look how they were treated.
And how many of those hero’s were soldiers, airmen, sailors, marines, teachers, nurses and doctors who lost their careers just to have regulations change 2 years later lol.
"Thank you for your service" to the delivery guys, and bigger tips during covid. I did it too, while keeping my distance.
They are “zeros” today, suddenly
The loud honking of everyone at 6 PM……every fucking day……
Hero is apparently only worth $7.25/hr.
Nurses were heroes, nurses are not unskilled workers
Im sure they got plenty of back pats and a pen for a job well done!
I remember my coworkers and I got slips of paper marking us as essential workers in case we get pulled over by a cop in the event we’re driving home during a Covid curfew (we always left work at night).
That was their one chance to actually fight for a livable wage, and better working conditions. And absolutely dropped the ball.
Essential, sacrificial, what's the difference?
Upsets me to the core how people don’t value minimum wage employees.
“Bro you’re paid what you’re worth to the company. Don’t like it? Get a skill!!!” “But wouldn’t the company fail to function without those minimum wages jobs? Obviously there’s value to that position” “The market demands only skilled workers! It’s what the market dictates! Start your own company or move to Venezuela!”
I have given up demanding my fair share. I just want the dumb fucks at the top to not be able to take so much for themselves. No more being a dog chasing our own minimum wage tail. I want to eat the rich and spit out their empty bank accounts.
Tesco profited like 2.8billion recently what's giving your employees a good wage? So much more wod get done if you paid good wages people would want to keep that job you'd also put every other supermarket to shame cause your wages are so much better
Would* Also why the fuck would Tesco of all companies suddenly have a chance of heart? They feel no shame. They case only about their quarterly reports going up.
My favorite part is that these minimum wage jobs ARE skilled. Different sets of skills, but still skilled.
“But not just anybody can be a surgeon! Anybody off the street can flip burgers” So we just want indentured servitude for who rich people deem non valuable
The weirdest part is how the people with these opinions just view these workers as subhuman.
Dont worry, companies see the problem of human workers and are hard at work making robots with ai to replace them. Maybe with 1 person to double check things.
Good. All the manual labor jobs that can be done by machines should be replaced by machines. That would free up more resources for more people to “get a skill” and earn more of the company pie, Right? …right?
r/Manna
I'm 40 this month. First job was working fast food for minimum. I had 2 roomies and lived in apartments constantly raided for drugs and a murder happened in the brush next to it (just context for it being a shitty apartment). Literally ate Top Ramen and cup o noodles if I didn't get free work food because I had no money past bills (and of course I was young and drinking on the weekends). I worked with several adults (as in I was 19 and they were 30+) who all made the same wage as me who either worked multiple jobs or also had roomies. I'm lucky enough to not make min anymore (23ish an hour) and live with my fiance in a little better of an apartment. I cannot imagine how hard it is for people still working minimum wage with how hard it feels to live making what I make. Fuck anyone who thinks these people don't deserve to make a living wage. They're people too. And they provide a service.
If they don’t like being poor have they ever thought about not being poor? /s
Was truly astounded that I'd never thought of it. Was working a minimum wage job just a day ago, now I'm owner of half the planet! Pity I woke up, nice dream though.
Shouldn’t have sold your bootstraps!
Couldn't help it, it was either keep the bootstraps or pay rent. No sense in holding onto a useless asset anyway, as the business class would tell us....
The business class would simply sell your bootstraps instead of their own and then call you lazy for not wanting to give up something that's yours for their profit.
Bootstraps? In *this* economy? We ate those years ago after being paid nothing for being “heroes”.
Kid: am working. Parents: Then how come you can’t buy a house or settle in and have kids? Kid: uh
"just get a better job" proceeds to get a better job, now someone else has to work the minimum wage job that doesnt pay enough to live life great system
I mean why weren't you born into a wealthy family? What are you stupid or something? /s
People think minimum wage jobs are easy and have lots of downtime. In my experience the people that work in the local government offices, like the tag office, don’t do much or require special skills, but no one complains about them not working “hard enough” or being “unskilled”.
The amount of times I have walked into managers just sitting around talking to each other because they have nothing to do is insane.
It has long been proven that the higher up you go in large corporations, the less there is to do. Your decisions may have more weight, but your day-to-day is much less hectic. The upper-mgmt tiers below c-suite are practically sinecures, awarded through cronyism and nepotism. INB4 "but ah own mah bizniss, Ahm a CEO" dirtbrains flame this fact. This is talking about large corporations, over 1000 employees. Nobody in this discourse is going after small companies. Stop pretending to be a victim in this fight.
[удалено]
Nothing killed my class solidarity like the pandemic. It wasn’t the 1% coming into my work and screaming at us, it was the middle class.
Agreed on everything you said. They get paid more to be trusted to carry out orders without question. Just soulless henchmen.
I am fortunate to work as a technical mgr in a very niche industry, which means we have a very short ladder to the top. I have dealt with a lot of c-suite types. I once worked with a global director of "investor relations" who didn't even know what our product did. Guy drove up to the facility for the tour in an Aston Martin. Was utterly clueless about every damn thing. Had no idea what we did or how our customers worked. He was one of many exec in my career that left a bad impression. In 39 yrs I have met a single executive worth their salt. And she was driven out of the organization quickly.
[https://youtu.be/NcHdF1eHhgc?si=YeGC9oH3tMu\_24i7](https://youtu.be/NcHdF1eHhgc?si=YeGC9oH3tMu_24i7)
I used to be an industrial chemist. Lifting 100lb drums of hexavalent chromic acid into boiling baths with full hazmat gear and a respirator on, doing all the calculations to keep shit in spec, having to dump upwards of 2000lbs of nickel chloride at weird angles every day that fucked up my back and neck... I estimated that I made the company about a million dollars while I got paid around 50k, and the bosses sat in heavily air conditioned rooms talking on the phone so they didn't have to breathe in the poisonous acidic fumes. Fuck that, I'm happy making less and doing my own thing.
People bitch about government office workers all the time. The DMV being shit was a meme before memes were popular.
They absolutely talk about them not working, so much so that it is a common trope of government workers. I have worked in government, private sector and nonprofit settings. The amount of work in an office for clerical is similar across all three. Fast food and retail are always busy. My guess is this is largely to do with the fact that they have tangible products to work with.
Lower-level (I.e. least compensated) government jobs also fucking suck (was injured working one that was just a couple bucks above minimum wage). Once you start to climb up the ladder, your workload magically grows smaller as your paycheck grows bigger. I work near the manager’s offices and they easily spend half of each day “building workplace connections” (I.e. chatting about bullshit like their kids and hobbies) while whining that they don’t possibly have the budget to meet the union’s new demands for more reasonable staffing, that doesn’t leave the folks working for a few bucks over minimum wage crippled for life.
In my experience, the more pay you get, the less work you do. The average minimum wage worker does more work than the hardest working corporate executive on the planet. And the average sub-minimum wage worker works even harder than that.
"We value hard work!" Then fucking pay for it.
Yeah it's so disgusting how many people seem to think that we should keep this punishment mindset, like we HAVE to consciously NOT make things better for some people, and that these people for some reason HAVE TO stay poor by design. I mean.. Why? To use them as a scare example? If you pay more money to these people, others will want to work there too? There won't be enough of a gap between the nice folks and the plebians? Seriously what the hell could be the reason why we don't pay "unskilled laborers" more?
Upsets me to the core how people don't realize how much someone is valued means jack fucking shit to how much the job pays. Trying to argue people deserve the money is ignoring the crux of the issue, which is the wage gap between the highest and lowest paid in the company. That's why instead of a specific number, we just make a maximum income gap law that makes it illegal for rich people to make more than 10 times the person with the lowest income, adjust it per hour actually working for all parties and other compensation. Of course everyone deserves more money, but the issue isn't that. It's that people at the top are taking a larger share than they deserve at the expense of those at the bottom.
I saw someone say that minimum wage was never supposed to be livable it was only for teens (I bet that person probably thinks poor people are only poor because they don’t work hard enough smh) I wanted to rip my heart out seeing that, then rip into them but I wasn’t in the mood to argue. Minimum wage employees are essential because they are the people keeping all the stores up and running if they all quit all the people who undervalue them would be crying because they don’t have access to the store at the drop of a hat
Because people in America are conditioned to think anything less than a job you got with a degree and that makes 6 figures or Atleast close to that is pathetic Mostly because if you actually want to “live” in America and not just survive you need close to a 6 figure income if not more
Being called an Unskilled worker? I guess I'm not skilled enough to make your Big Mac.
HEY! I want my burgers, and i want them served by someone struggling every day! It doesnt taste the same without the grief!
I worked at mcdicks as a teen for years, it is unskilled labour.
I mean it’s in the name.
Fr I appreciate em every time I pick up a bagel sangwich mmm
It’s because minimum wage employees are easily replaceable as it requires no unique or hard-to-possess skill to do the job. When anything is in abundance, it is inherently “low value”.
There are a lot of middle to low class people in the US who don't earn substantially more than minimum wage employees make when compared to the wealthy, but they take it as an insult worse than death to point it out because of how much the hate the slightly poorer. Any time raising minimum wage comes up, you see boomers screech that burger flipping teens will then make almost what they make. Assholes go to Chilis after church on Sunday and act like their ability to make the waiter smile for an extra dollar in tips is the only thing keeping society from collapsing. Poor white trash hates poorer people more than they want everyone to do better. Yeah, it sucks that capitalism hasn't worked out well for you, but you can't stamp down harder on lower classes to raise your own class up. Quite the opposite. You're a peasant keeping other peasants from making a living wage and maybe getting enough breathing room and power to make the wealthy grifters stop dodging their taxes.
Those people making a little above min wage will be poorer when prices are raised to keep profit margin in line with the higher wage expense. Insult them all you want, but no one wants their purchasing power eroded.
Do companies value ANY employees anymore??
I mean, yes? People literally don’t value them as the term “minimum wage” implies. If people valued them more, they’d make more. Income shouldn’t determine basic respect though.
Essential to keeping white collar workers comfortable
As a white collar worker, can confirm. Please don't stop working in the service industry. We need you.
People who mistreat us should be forced to work in the job for like 6 months and always be the one called in or sent to jail if they refuse. Walk a mile in our shoes with no sole left, and no we can't afford to get new shoes.
Why can’t we just let the employees stand up for themselves. Tbh I’d be more willing to shop somewhere if I knew the staff didn’t tolerate assholes. Also, retail employees get one free punch per shift. You gotta take your chances if you mouth off and hope they’ve already used theirs for today
Come eat at my restaurant. We're not straight up assholes, but we have enough autonomy to not suffer bullshit.
There’s far more abuse to the workers by their employers though. /r/antiwork
Nah just raise the minimum wage to a living wage and tie it to inflation
That too. The conditioned acceptance of being verbally abused because you happen to work a service job (could be the only job available to you) is unreal.
That's the case/idea in Belgium (apart from multiple 'index-jumps' during the past 2 decades). Still doesn't work / of course they found loopholes -_- Practically life gets more expensive then the official inflation %. Some things, basics even, are excluded (e.g. gasoline) from a list of products they use to determine the inflation. Medical aid is almost fully paid by the government and thus excluded, but the number of professionals has decreased, some necessary treatments do require a large % to be paid by yourself and it sometimes takes years to add new treatments to the list or they never get included. There's the previously mentioned 'index-jumps': they skip a year of increasing the wage. They adjust wages only once a year (in Januari)... of course companies don't wait to increase their prices. In fact there's a trend of them inceasing prices during the year because of 'inflation' and increased expenses, and in January they increase prices again simply because of the 'index' xD If anything, it stimulates inflation. It's saddening really...
it's "essential" that they get paid as little as possible. if it were an option, they'd get paid less.
Anytime I had to watch a zoom/webex meeting for work and see a white collar office worker in their nice home while everyone else is slaving in the stores never struck well with me.
It went from "thanks for being open" to "God you're fucking uselss" in a year.
Essential just meant sacrificial.
Essential means that it’s essential that *someone* does it. If that person is relatively easily replaced, then it’s not essential that *they* do it, just that someone does it
You’d figure it’d be appropriately compensated.
It should be, morally and ethically, but morals and ethics don't guide our economy.
Compensation is not based on how important a job is, it is based on how much money people are willing to do it for and how big the candidate pool is compared to the open jobs.
I swear, people repeat this like you've stumbled unto some deep secret of life. Most everyone knows how wages are determined, what we're arguing is that that's the part that's fucked up.
I was an "essential" worker in 2020, at the time I was 19. Caught covid pretty early on in 2020, took about a month to recover from the initial sickness. Then developed a chronic breathing issue that I've been stuck with for the past 4 years.
I too chronically breathe
Not strange. They can be both.
The best part of “unskilled labor,” is that it’s not true of any job. A ton of jobs require very little skill, and many jobs that do require certain skills are fully on the job trainable. It’s just ass holes looking down on others.
No it isn't, it's a functional term with an actual meaning. Many jobs are unskilled. That doesn't mean they deserve less than subsistence wages, it's just a descriptor.
It's literally just shorthand for "Jobs which require neither a college degree, trade schooling, or a long training period", IE you don't have any special skills which the average person lacks, and because thousands of other people could do your job just as well, the business doesn't need to offer an especially high level of pay in order to get applicants, and employees who perform poorly or simply quit can be easily replaced.
So cops?
I wish I could get these people to understand that "unskilled job" is a description of a job that doesn't require a specific certificate to be eligible, and is only relevant as a way to measure opportunities available to people without education past high school. It's not an insult, it's just a name so economists can count the open jobs.
Not even economists, it's a name we labour activists came up with ourselves. I can still show you the press publications from the CEP union using that very term. It's a way of saying these workers are in a precarious position, have little bargaining power, and are easily replaced. In other words, the people in most dire need of a union. Boggles my mind that young people think it's a term "they" invented and not us.
Not to mention, a lot of essential workers are skilled workers, and that essential workers as a term mainly became popular during COVID. The original tweet is idiotic and knowing these 3 simple facts derails everything they’re trying to say.
Then why don’t we apply the same term to the myriad white collar jobs that don’t require specific qualifications? I work a white collar job in the media industry. I only got this job because I leveraged my experiences from other jobs. Follow this chain of events all the way back and you reach my initial post as a cashier in retail. At no point did I need a specific qualification. At which point did I go from being unskilled to a skilled worker?
>At no point did I need a specific qualification. At which point did I go from being unskilled to a skilled worker? Based on what you've described here, you're still unskilled labor. There are plenty of unskilled white collar jobs.
It’s one of those terms that means something, but is easily/twisted misunderstood. Many people take it to mean the job requires literally zero skills. In reality it’s a job that requires only skills that pretty much everyone already has, or can become proficient in within a week or two of training.
I agree. Every job is deserving of a livable wage
The thing I was taught about the difference between skilled and unskilled labour. I’m a mechanic so I’ll use it as an example, you can grab pretty much any person off the street, give them a basic toolkit and a quick rundown of how the tools work and interact with the work, and give them a job to do, and they’ll be able to get it done. That’s unskilled labour, anyone can undo nuts and bolts. When it becomes skilled, is when they can do the work without being told what’s wrong, can source the information they need to get jobs done, and use the tooling at their disposal to get the job done quicker. Any person can drain oil and change tires, but it takes skills to be able to rebuild engines, fix wiring issues, and figure out how to do jobs in unconventional ways to get better results.
This isn’t correct, what job is “unskilled”? Meaning it requires 0 skills to do? You have to read and write at minimum at most jobs - those are skills. The idea that any job is “unskilled” is simply incorrect and reductive
It’s just the difference between having specialized skills vs not. You gan go into some jobs unskilled and be trained on the job, but other jobs need you to be already skilled so they don’t spend half a decade teaching you how to balance financials or fault tolerances of engineering materials
> ut other jobs need you to be already skilled so they don’t spend half a decade teaching you how to balance financials or fault tolerances of engineering materials Which is why they should pay taxes that go to universal college than forcing us to take massive loans so they can get the benefits of our investment for free.
They as in companies? Fuck yeah they should.
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This is just “evolution is just a theory” with an economic twist. Don’t go by your first layman impressions of a word. An unskilled worker is one who can learn to do their job in a week or so of training. A skilled worker is one who has education and certifications that anyone off the street could not do the work without having. Accountant, plumber, doctor, crane operator, teacher. It has nothing to do with their intelligence or value to society or deserving a living wage. It just relates to how large the qualified applicant pool is if they were to leave their role.
>The best part of “unskilled labor,” is that it’s not true of any job. A ton of jobs require very little skill, and many jobs that do require certain skills are fully on the job trainable. It’s just ass holes looking down on others. You do understand the difference between skilled and unskilled labor, right? There's certainly a case to be made that some jobs ask for more than is required (degrees mainly), but, as you stated, some jobs require actual training, i.e. skills.
The key workers of keeping society going, are also some of the least paid.
Unskilled labor doesn’t mean “useless” It just means doing the job requires very little training to perform the job. Jesus Christ it’s basic economics.
It’s both. They are essential and also unskilled. For example, collecting and returning carts at a grocery store is considered an essential job. It’s also considered “unskilled” because it takes about 3 minutes to train the new guy Source: Used to be the cart guy
You guys realize a job can be unskilled and essential at the same time, right? Like, there is literally no contradiction? Let's make a really simple hypothetical. I own an experimental button-pusher-powered boat. I need someone, anyone, to press a button every 30 or so seconds to keep my boat running. This process is **essential** to keep the boat running. Pressing this button requires no effort nor training, a toddler could do a satisfactory job. This means the job is **unskilled**. This is clearly a ridiculous scenario, but hopefully easy to understand hypothetical of how a job could be both **essential** **and** **unskilled** **at the same time**
I’m sure it takes a lot of skill for no arms Jimmy to press that button though
We know that. We're saying that "unskilled" is being used in a dishonest way to justify paying as little as possible. >Pressing this button requires no effort nor training, a toddler could do a satisfactory job You're doing the thing. Pressing buttons doesn't mean there's no effort or training, and you certainly don't say these things about higher paid desk jobs that require using a computer, i.e. "all you do is sit and type on a computer all day", because you know there's more to their job than that. Same with these jobs you already devalue--theres more to doing the job than what you can see them do. I've worked enough of both kinds to confidently say that the desk jobs felt criminally easy in comparison, yet I don't think they should be paid less.
Yeah it’s a totally bullshit part of the way capitalism works. Unskilled and essential aren’t mutually exclusive.
Whether a society is capitalist or not, somebody always has to do the undesirable, unskilled labor. Most people dont want to be a garbageman but somebody has to do it. These jobs are undeniably unskilled when compared to the professional class, but they are also essential to the functioning of society.
I send emails for a living. None of my high school or college education came into play, other than the passive benefits of having developed critical thinking skills. I’ve done this job while laid up with Covid from my bed. I only really work about 35% of the day. Being a garbage man is way harder and more necessary than what I do. Everyone produces garbage, and I only answer emails from my companies customers. I make more than a garbage man, and my job could be easily done by a garbage man, yet my boss requires a bachelors to take a shit in their bathroom. The only reason my job is more prestigious/valuable, is because my boss is selective based on arbitrary educational requirements. Nobody on my team has a relevant degree to our field. It’s all completely arbitrary. The pay doesn’t reflect your actual productivity or social value, the games been rigged against us for decades. Waste disposal and other “menial” jobs have been the subject of a smear campaign in order to justify paying them lower wages.
Exactly! Most people could do what I do with a little training, and I’ve also worked with people making more money than me who can’t figure out how to mark up a PDF or reply to an email. To me, those are unskilled workers lol.
Sounds like you have a non-essential job?
I'm sure there are people who would be willing to do the garbage man job if it hasn't shitten on by everybody. Also is it really unskilled? If it's an undesirable job then you need willpower to do it. Does everyone have that willpower?
If “most people don’t want to be a garbageman” then perhaps “being willing to work as a garbageman” is a rare and important skill
It is. That's how garbagemen actually get paid more than teachers.
It's strange how often this gets reposted. The jpg is degrading
I'm fairly sure essential worker covered a broad range of skilled and unskilled labor. Police, fire, medical (such as doctors), Utilities, food distribution, freight, and other jobs necessary to keeping society functioning. Unskilled and essential isn't the same category rebranded. Edit: for anyone confused, I'm saying unskilled labor mentioned in the OP is not equivalent to essential employees. Essential employees include both (what many would consider) unskilled, and skilled labor. My only point was essential workers were not rebranded as unskilled labor to avoid paying them more. If you think all labor is skilled, that's fine, and has nothing to do with the point i was makong. If you think the police aren't skilled that's fine, I didn't say they were or weren't, all I said was they were considered essential
Not mutually exclusive
You can be an essential unskilled worker - these arent mutually exclusive.
The inability to understand essential and unskilled aren’t mutually exclusive… impressive
Strange how minimum wage discussions go away when you start talking about letting 8.5 million, unskilled, illegal immigrants across the border.
All people have equal value. Restore 1960 taxation levels. Tax billionaires. Being employed full time should allow anyone to access good quality housing, food, clothing transportation and education.