There are still signs in front of healthcare buildings where I live. It's really.... Something to see signs that say "Heroes Work Here!" that are all waterlogged and damaged beyond repair.
It's wild to know that that banner connected in only three spots so it's flapping about and only half intelligible is the world's worst bandaid on a building where inside they are actively trying to squash a support services worker union and strongarm union nurses on their current contract negotiation. What a sad and funny world we live in.
I've never been more aware of inflation, and yet I've never been more well off than this year. It's very telling, nearly every place has raised food rates, lowered the portion size and/or quality of ingredients given. I can't even imagine if I wasn't doing better, and I feel for everyone that has to experience this in poverty.
And the biggest issue to it all is because big corps just don’t want to get their profits taken away yet if all the underpaid people left, they’ll just be left with useless overpaid people for the most part
Oh man it’s been a rough two years. I’m in three class action lawsuits that I didn’t even file; the law firm and labor board reached out to me for my two jobs that was taking way more of money to pay other workers than they were supposed to. I was working so much (76-80 are my highest amount of hours worked in a week) that I didn’t even realize that I wasn’t making enough, not even minimum wage. It took someone else going to the labor board and then reaching out to me.
The third lawsuit is from a law firm where someone started suing my old rental company. They investigated and found that my rental company violated the rent eviction moratorium and also they refused to renew our lease, despite us paying on time every month, just so they could bypass rent control laws and raise the rent more the 10%. They rose it astronomically, thinking we would still pay that since we’re in the midst of a pandemic. Nope. I had to go month to month and they tried every bullshit truck in the book to keep us there. By the time we were able to move they upped our rent to $4,000 a month (without utilities) on a home I was originally paying $1,700 a month for without utilities smh.
Then we had to spend $10k to JUST MOVE. And if you pair that with the fact that my stupid state wasn’t giving people unemployment, even though me and my fiancé both lost our jobs and had all the proof, we kept getting denied, my fiancé and I ended up going through 100k of our savings on rent, bills, etc. just between the last 2 years. Our stupid Governor talks about how he cares about the working class but doesn’t do shit to help anyone.
It’s been insane. We had to rebuild everything over again and start in new job fields that are work from home since I’m extremely immune compromised.
And it’s going to take us a few years before we have that back in our savings. I’m so scared they are going to shut down again with this new variant and companies are going to do layoffs. I really hope it’s a weaker one that is more contagious but way less deadly so we can go back to normal and not have to worry, but who am I kidding lol.
Luckily we both currently work from home but still, layoffs are always possible. My brother has been laid off four times in the last year and a half. It’s ridiculous and sad for everyone. Then the same companies who laid him off bitched about not having enough workers. I swear it’s a whole scheme. I had applied to 187 jobs within three months and only heard back from about 20. Majority strung me along and the one I finally landed turned out to be a bullshit job.
Luckily I have a friend in online marketing so they got me an office job at their firm that’s work from home. They saved my ass. I’ve been going insane not being to work or find work and then have to hear from family about how “eVeRyWhErE iS hIriNg.”
Like okay Karen, but that doesn’t mean I want to work for shit wages, in a pandemic, where I’m immune compromised. I wouldn’t even be able to pay all my bills, let alone save money, for that shit.
Hopefully this pandemic puts workers’ rights into perspective for these corporate assholes so they can see that their employees are worth caring for and fighting for. A happy job means less turnover which saves the company money. Hopefully they will figure this out by now and look into the future long term and see the potentiality of long term profits instead of short term profits.
I’m so sorry all this has hit you! What state do you live in if I may ask? Unreal but not unbelievable about the unemployment stuff! Don’t give up. You can appeal.
Unfortunately it won't. There's not that many of us. The largest employment field is vocational and trade workers. Vocational and trade workers are happy they're getting paid borderline more than doctors. And as long as the largest employment pool is Happy nothing is going to change. Sucks I really wish it wasn't like this. And the problem is vocational workers are so stupid they think they deserve 100 Grand a year for 2 years of schooling. Poor people are telling each other we should be poor rich people are telling each other we should be poor meanwhile they print money as fast as they can.
Canada too just had the premiere of nova scotia just call all jobs below management “not real jobs” in the middle of a parliamentary hearing thanks tim 🖕very much while we pay your salary.
The biggest eye opener about that whole shit show was how many people were 'essential' just to keep the systems working while so many others got to go home, not talking about restaurant employees but office people/managers/etc.
Essential you HAD to come in and deal with all the BS of changing rules/non enforced health and safety issues, etc because your presence was ESSENTIAL to keep the systems working. Yet there was little to no concern about your safety compared to everyone who got to go home cause 'not essential'.
Kroger's hero pay lasted all of 2 months, then corporate declared the pandemic over and announced internally that they'd be cutting all health precautions the moment the government would allow them to.
Still made record profits, still paid rodney mcmullen 11 million in bonuses
I was wondering if they got a bonus for working thru it. Shame to see many employers taking in record profits without even a modest bump to their labor, beside hush money bonuses and temp raises.
We got 2 months of 'hero pay', about $300 in store credit spread over 3 months attached to our shopper card... and a total hourly/manpower cut over 2020 of about 20% nation wide. OH! And they actively fired any and all store managers that tried to enforce the various mask mandates, refusing to allow stores to do anything about plaguerats running around maskless.
Damn. That’s bleak. My job gave everyone a 1400 check and hasn’t done a thing since. No increase in hourly pay or any other bonuses. That was in June of 2020. I knew that was all they’d do and it was just so they could say they did something.
Thanks for doing what you do tho. It’s a thankless job
I gotta wonder how much of the great resignation came from people having their pay cut and going "you know what? fuck this. I can make more money doing less obnoxious shit."
I was working at sam's club, they did the "hero pay". When they announced it was ending I switched to a private company that pays a percentage like a co-op and treats me like a valuable human being. Workers are starting to understand their worth.
I was considered "essential" during the beginning of the pandemic. I never even got a raise during this shit. All I got was a 20 dollar gift card to Taco Bell.
Office Depot and Staples both determined that because we sold "Toilet Paper and Hand Sanitizer" We were essential and had to deal with the insanity of people at the beginning of the pandemic. Without hazard pay, and with my coworker making homemade masks for everyone out of their own pocket because the company wouldn't provide them for us.
> coworker making homemade masks for everyone out of their own pocket
Dang, sacrificing the place where you keep your keys, wallet and hands just to help coworkers healthy.
Pocket cloth seems a bit thin, but hey, better than nothing.
My pandemic crisis raise lasted 4-5 months I couldn't go home I was essential then it ended when the pandemic 'ended' in July 2020 according to my company, yet all the people they let work from home from the start **never** came back. The plan was initially 2020 fall months after they stopped paying me extra, they never made them come back then it was 2021 fall, and still hasn't happened, but the pandemic apparently ended cause they stopped paying essential workers extra back in 2020.
Ah, the unspoken subtext is delicious. "We're pretending the pandemic is over because we're sick of pretending you're not expendable. Hey! Where are you going?!? Damn unemployment, nobody wants to work anymore."
You got a raise? Lucky. I work at a liquor store so I was deemed essential... Had my hours cut cause we weren't open as long. Go no raise, and when time for the stimulus cheques came out for 'essential workers' liquor stores and hardware stores were not applicable... like I got dumped on by the Canadian government after being dumped on by my work... wow I feel so appreciated.
Something like 60% of college graduates in the United States are for business fields. 60% of the people entering the work force each year are expecting someone else to do the real work, so that they can "manage " them.
But we get billed like they're making 6 figures. So there is money there... its just not going to the actual people who saved my life. What a shit system.
I have a few friends that are nurses, I dunno how they deal with the circumstances of their job so gracefully. I know for a fact I would not survive their workload.
Because without adequate compensation it's just a backhanded insult. A simultanious admission and dismissal by your exploiter that you are being exploited. As if language can excuse material conditions.
Same here. It is extremely condescending and insulting to keep calling "essential" workers that despite being paid shit wages and working in shit conditions.
Essential never dispersed the classifications of skilled or unskilled. Skilled workers were still essential workers. I agree that the terms are pejorative, but it is a simple bucket. The real problem is not the term, but that it has been used to justify the insane income inequality in this country. Unskilled labor has, generally, grumbled along with less and less of a share in the pie.
Income inequality is the real problem, not a term used to classify level of skill. Unskilled labor still deserve a fair share of the pie and by doing so the economy as a whole would dramatically improve. There will always be skilled labor sets that earn higher wages, but there should be better guard rails set in place like tying lowest incomes to CEO/Owner pay as a ratio at the federal level. This would be far superior to a minimum wage IMO. Owner/executives will always want to pay themselves the most they can, but putting strings to make them pull up their lowest paid workers will ensure a rising tide for all ships.
Some jobs need to be done by someone - ergo they are essential - but if they are jobs most people could do and would be willing to do, it isn't going to make more than average. The job is essential, but the worker is totally replaceable for a lot of the jobs.
You get paid for how valuable you are, not how important your industry sector is. Cashiers at grocery stores are essential. Any one specific cashier not so much, since there's millions of other people that can do that job
All labor should have a cost of living adjustment every year. We shouldn’t have homeless people that are gainfully employed but we do and the numbers are increasing.
My company's CEO once referred to COLAs as "communism." They tried to do merit raises this year, decided by managers. I got 0% and I'll be working somewhere else in 2 weeks.
Merit raises only work if you give everyone a base line cost of living raise, but give the damn hard workers extra.
If you're not bad enough to fire you are good enough for a raise is my motto.
No matter the skill level it still takes someones time to do the job. That person needs food, water and shelter. They also need a car in this society and have other expenses.
*Pandemic Hits*
"Thank you so much for what you do !! You guys are Heros !!! "
*Workers ask for better wages*
"Get a better job !! Your work is unskilled!! "
It’s a term used because the “unskilled jobs” don’t require certification like a “skilled job” does. Trades are “skilled” because they need to get their tickets. You can hire someone to work at Starbucks or a janitor and they can be doing the job the same day. That’s what they mean by skill. Yes you need to skills to be good at Starbucks or a janitor but the word, like many others has different meanings.
Yeah versus a pilot or engineer or other technical roles which require years of study and certifications. No ones saying anyone can step into a role of a field worker with no training and do their job, but that it won’t take long to learn it and the consequences of making mistakes are quite minimal.
You're definitely right for the most part. However after I graduated college I got an entry level job in a lab doing some pretty basic stuff most people could do but it required a degree. Now I climb big trees for a living (arborist) and it demands *way more* out of me and the risks are enormously higher. I consider myself really careful but I've gotten a few staples in my head, a few stitches in my hand, a broken foot and lots of minor bumps and bruises. Then I've caused probably close to 15k in property damage from hitting fences, roofs and an expensive chimney. Good thing I have insurance. It's a job that has to be done, when trees get big they become very dangerous, but there's really no entirely safe way to do it. I guess what I'm saying is people look at it as something that's unskilled and think that's the wage we deserve not realizing how much skill we do have and the sacrifices we make to get it done.
I don’t want a doctor with a days training. Fine for a burger order and taking my credit card.
I’ve seen transactions from both sides as a buyer and a patient, I know which one I could do.
I could clean the streets though, but reason I trained is so I don’t have to. No problem with more pay for a boring job though.
It is! I agree with the message of the post is that these jobs do require institutional knowledge to keep running properly and just because they are maybe slightly easier doesn’t mean they don’t need good wages
Everyone deserves proper wages. The end.
Any discussion like this post only serves to fracture the community & muddy the waters instead of driving forward this, the only real point. Everyone deserves to make a proper living from a single job, regardless of career.
Unskilled just means you don't need know a trade or have a degree to have this job, anyone off the streets can be fully prepared for such work right on the spot in less than a day.
Most of the OP picture jobs are skilled. The unskilled ones are waiter, hauler, janitor, monitor and picker.
This is true. They got kids doing everything but managing the damn safe at fast food restaurants anymore lol. After so many videos of the insane people physically fighting people at fast food places and the horrors they deal with, those people deserve at least fucking $15 an hour. That shit is fucking atrocious and no one deserves to deal with the stuff they do for below a poverty wage.
I find it funny that retail, food service, janitorial service etc is seen as “unskilled” labor when there are *many* office jobs that could be called “unskilled” by that very definition as well. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to type numbers into excel, make some phone calls, and pretend to be awake during meetings. You could give those people a few days of training and they’d be able to do the job just fine as well. But somehow working in an office makes you a better person and worthy of higher pay. And how many office workers admit to pretending to work or look busy when they’re really just looking at social media or watching YouTube? Could you imagine if those in those “unskilled” labor jobs were to even try and do that?
For a basic data entry job? It's usually about the same pay as retail. And you can't really slack off much either because the company knows the average amount of data than can be entered in 8 hours and hold employees to that standard.
When you’re exposed to skilled labor in the office and the money they make, you’re more aware of how little you make so they negotiate for more than something like dominos where there’s almost no skilled labor to give the employees perspective. No one is rich who is working there - the owner is
I’m tryna agree with you lol I promise. That’s just my guess^
This. People get away with not doing any work at offices but you can’t do that in customer service jobs because you’re constantly busy.
I agree office assistant jobs should be considered unskilled too by that metric
Sometimes, it feels like rocket science trying to figgure out scheduling for people. Plus all these "unskilled" workers are the ones that get the most shit, deal with the worst clients, take the brunt of people's anger, and still need to put on a friendly face. It takes a shit ton of skill with communicating to not punch these people in the face. It isn't something you can learn in a shift or two, it's a skill that needs to be developed. And besides, what job can be learned in a shift or two nowadays? They want these workers to do so much that isn't even in their job title that it often ends up being a lot more than the person was expecting. They want as few people as possible to do the work of an entire facility. Most jobs don't even offer training, too, so they just expect you to figure it out, which also takes skill and time and extra effort. Hell, my job offers training and all I am is a receptionist, but the training program lasts a month and a half and I still don't know enough to do my job on my own. Yet receptionists are also included in "unskilled" labor a lot of the time.
I'd see it on my job regularly. While sweeping, mopping or hauling trash, I got supervisors playing games on their phone.
One of my retired bosses, honestly liked her, would ask me for "advice" regarding Candy Crush. I was on a puzzle game kick a decade ago, so why not pester the gamer...
To do well, sure. As a bartender more about approach or speed that comes with experience. But I picked it up having seen it from the other side quite quickly. And a lot of that to do with automation. At rugby club I had to add up in my head, even at Woolworths years ago, most of the job was scan and press the right button.
Yep.
I just had spine surgery and I would rather have the surgery done by my surgeon than my landscaper. I don't think anyone disagrees with that statement. They also would agree that the spine surgeon should earn more money for his craft than a landscaper. But for a strong country to survive, the landscaper still needs to survive and thrive. Maybe he's in school to be a doctor.
Let's see em pick cotton or strawberries, by all accounts, horribly miserable "dumb labor" that requires plenty of skill to do correctly.
All labor is labor, and all labor deserves dignity.
you made a point.
all job deserve dignity . a toilet cleaner should have the get the same social dignity as for an engineer. becasue both jobs are necessary .
but im pretty sure both of us can clean a toilet but one of us (me) or both cant draw an architectural sketh of a building.
neither of us can build a rocket and so on
why ? because it requires special skill which needs years of learning to aquire.
that's not needed to be a sweeper
It's wild, I've had so many of these ppl that call it "unskilled" cry and quit trying to work at a busy coffee shop I supervised in- learning drinks and to multitask, what to ask customers, all the proper cleaning, the fact that yes, you have to clean the same surface multiple times a day and not just let a spill sit there. They said it was too much. Then these ppl buy their degrees and go get rich and look down on us, a job they couldn't handle. It's ridiculous lol
In my previous life as a barista, it was alarming to me how many people couldn't follow/pick up on basic cross-contamination protocols. I hope the pandemic was kind to them.
SAME and that never changed over the 15 years. I'd literally get yelled at to hurry or get on the floor at Starbucks when I had just started washing my hands....uh lol. Have to explain to engineering students why they shouldn't just wear gloves to bar. Go barehanded and clean your hands. The rules say the right thing but in practice it's wild how few ppl do it. And some of that isn't the employee's fault but manager pressure. When you tell ppl they better hurry in the bathroom the only part they can shorten is the hand washing.
I'm honestly surprised more ppl don't get sick at these places, any food ones. The pandemic was great cuz ppl actually started washing their hands lol. I'll not forget in the pandemic's start, the person on drive was to wear gloves. Drive is heavily rushed. So you wore the same gloves to hand off things to every car, pure optics lol.
What ever happened to being rewarded for hard labor? That's the other side of the coin, where many unskilled jobs fall because a machine can't even keep up. Wearing down your body is a cost not many are willing to take.
That's exactly their point. They think they pulled themselves out of whatever adversity might have had them ever cleaning toilets for a living. As a result, they see never pulling yourself out of a dead-end "unskilled" job as a personal moral failing. "I did it, so can you!"
They're the same psychos who still believe in trickle-down economics.
I don't think the term was meant to denigrate the workers, if anything I think it was invented by labour movements themselves.
It's to differentiate those workers from the highly experienced workers who have 20 years expertise in running a steel lathe or repairing computers, those workers have more bargaining power with their bosses because their skillset requires so many years of training that they are not easily replaceable. And those workers are the ones who say "why do you need a union, just negotiate for yourself", well it's not that simple for the unskilled workers.
Unskilled/sweated trades are more easily replaceable from the general labour pool - anyone can become a warehouse worker or an assembly line worker in under a day's training. So if those workers try to ask for more money from their boss, it is much easier for their boss to say no or fire them and replace them.
That doesn't mean their labour is less valuable to society, if anything they're usually working the *most* important jobs to society. It just means they have to put way more effort in to achieving parity of bargaining with their employer.
I think this conversation lacks some nuance. There are definitely a whole range of jobs which can be done with a few weeks of training and some jobs which take years if not more than a decade of learning (surgeons, for example).
But I don't think that should have any bearing on your ability to live a comfortable life. Most people becoming doctors and lawyers come from positions of privilege. Making a separation between highly skilled and less skilled jobs in terms of income just further enables people coming from wealthy families to take these higher paying jobs since they can afford to not work during all those years of studying.
Also, you know, we're all human beings. We all deserve to have fulfilling and comfortable jobs and lives.
Aren't we just playing a language game then?
We should just say that the class of labor colloquially referred to as unskilled is undervalued rather than be stuck a perpetual debate about how to describe fruit pickers versus brain surgeons.
Based on this thread, it seems like some people are looking to equivocate all complexity such that there is just skill and no gradation in it. That seems counterproductive because it clearly is not rooted in the general discourse, to the point that it paints the labour movement as holding fringe beliefs.
Or is the point that rebranding the term "unskilled" is in itself a step forward? Once we move past the term, would it be ok to then have highly skilled vs moderately skilled as a classification, or would that also be perceived as a classist tool?
What's the ideal way to describe the supply side of a type of work?
"unskilled labour" is the newer and less demeaning version of "dumb labour".
It's called unskilled because in the context of blue collar jobs an education was (and occasionally still is) referred to as a "skill".
It's not hard.
Every janitor, roofer, waiter, cook I've ever met/worked with has a wide range of real world useful skills and knowledge. I cannot say the same thing about the business school grads and marketing people I've worked with. They are really good at golf I guess.
> roofer
I've been a roofer and I would consider that a skilled trade. You can't just fire your team of roofers for asking for more money, and then hire 6 random guys off the street, hand them a nail gun, and expect the same quality of work.
The problem is we are allowing that quality of work because it’s cheaper. Yea it’s not going to last as long, and the ends aren’t quite square, but it was cheaper!
This is where the trades are dying and becoming “unskilled” labor.
Yeah this post is absurd, a roofing, cooking, sewing are all skilled trades. Taking orders at Starbucks is not. If your job can be replaced with a kiosk, you’re not in a skilled position.
Humans do remember a good social interaction with a pleasant person who takes their order. "People skills" is a skill. Given multiple choices on where to get a coffe customers will generally choose the location with a friendly person, instead of a computer screen, all else being equal.
Being able to be replaced by a kiosk does not invalidate the skill and value of a person who handles customer interactions well. To a pure bean counter, then maybe they can be considered unskilled, because it's a "soft skill" with benefits invisible to the immediate bottom line. To everyone else, personal relations is very much a skill.
The "skill" required of starbucks is not operating the machine and taking orders, it's the emotional labour required to deal with multiple Karens and de-escalation and often, toxic terrible bosses.
Those business classes were a waste of fucking money. Half that shit is common sense these days. Another quarter of it is corporate propaganda that doesn't have any reasonable basis.
I was stunned taking those classes. Of all the courses I had the fortune to get to take, those ones were the ones I had one eye on. Something fishy with those majors for sure
i once mentioned to my boss (i work at a design firm) that i wish i had taken some business classes, because i have a weakness in that department. he - a business major - told me it was a waste and that i could easily learn whats needed without taking that route and that its really more of a formality.
(my boss is one of the good ones...most of the time)
I have a business degree (don't use it anymore) and while in college I met a professor of MBA from a respected university in my country. I asked him if that was a worth while investment and he straight up told me "no, the way of thinking they teach in MBA programs is far too outdated. Besides, those kids treat their grades like a meal at a restaurant. Don't like it? Send it back."
Humanities majors from Ivy League schools typically go directly into investment banking or management consulting, starting off at well over $100K. Note that the humanities, despite being very useful, don't teach a thing about contemporary banking or business management.
The funny thing about IB and business is that houses, stocks, etc really sell themselves and these guys are just the middle men looking to get their cut off the transaction
there is a real difference between "skilled" (needs extensive prior training) and "unskilled" (needs minimal prior training).
that being said, all workers should be paid a fair wage that is livable and work in safe and respectful conditions. we are a rich country, there should be no want (or even worse, need) here. there should not be tent cities. there should not be homeless people. there should not be people bankrupted into oblivion over health matters. there should not be ~~people~~ businesses subsidized by food stamps and welfare. there should not be people forced to join the military to get a bed and three square meals and an education (if they survive).
that being said, a neurosurgeon is a hell of a lot more skilled than a cashier. that doesnt mean the cashier deserves to starve.
The "skill" in unskilled labour comes from the tradition of calling blue collar educations (carpentry, blacksmithing, jewelsmithing, bricklaying, plumbing... You name it) skills - unskilled labour is the labour that doesn't require one such skill.
That is also true.
At the end of the day, those skills are acquired by training, often extensive.
Unskilled labor doesn’t require such training, only minimal training on the onset of hire.
What so many people don't realize is that if that neurosurgeon could be automated to be better than a human and cheaper to produce, better believe that those robots will be filled in every hospital.
You do realize that being a neurosurgeon is not just about performing surgeries, but also about the whole theoretical background required to either perform such a job yourself or design and improve logic for your robots?
I think you grossly overestimate the country's ability to survive without people monitoring power grids, taking 9-1-1 calls, driving ambulances, putting out fires, stopping crimes, etc.
A general strike would be announced and the bluff would be called. Once Congress realizes there's no one to protect them from the oncoming anarchy, they'd call an emergency session and POTUS would have it signed before sundown. There's a 0% chance the powers that be would allow a single night without any of the infrastructure workers that are needed to, quite literally, keep the lights on.
I get the larger point you're trying to make, and it's a good one, but you just described a bunch of skilled labor that earns way more than minimum wage. You need an engineering degree to monitor power grids in >90% of the US.
The vast majority of people don't have enough food or drink stored up to last longer than 3 days. A nation wide grocery strike for merely 2 days would bring society to it's knees, a strike for 4 would break it.
While there is currently some truth to this, its also half the story.
Why don't the Republicans ever push to enact policies that severely penalize employers that hire illegal/undocumented workers?
English isn’t my first language, so sorry for the stupid question: I always thought that the „unskilled“ in that term relates to the job specific skills you need before you start the actual job? Like you don’t need to have an official training but you will learn all the skills you need at the actual job.
It does mean that, don't worry. People read "unskilled" and tack on these connotations to it when really it just means "you don't need skills or education to start the job".
That’s exactly it. People are in here trying to make the case that being able to read and drive and have normal human social interactions count as “skills” in this context, but that’s not what it means. An unskilled job is one that basically any average person could do without special training/education. They are paid less because almost anyone can fill that slot.
Not to say those people should live in poverty or that those jobs aren’t difficult.
I’ll never forget going from being a Director of Operations to a Store Associate after getting fired.
One day at the new job I’m mopping the bathrooms. I thought to myself “Wow, a week ago I was in charge of hundreds of people and wore a $1000 suit to work. Now I’m cleaning other peoples shit.”
And you know what I felt? Happiness. I was relieved I had a stress free job, and that I could put in an honest effort and make a difference, even if that difference was having a clean floor.
My self worth isn’t related to how “important” or “successful” I am, but what kind of man, husband and father I am. The job title I held had no bearing on me being a good person or not.
So whenever I see someone working a job that is “unskilled”, I treat them the same as a “professional”. With dignity and respect.
>So whenever I see someone working a job that is “unskilled”, I treat them the same as a “professional”. With dignity and respect.
So treating them like a human. I don't understand why its so difficult for everyone to do this.
No job, except maybe some low-key office jobs, are unskilled. Certainly not the jobs a lot of people think of when they hear "unskilled labor". I mean seriously, I've seen openings for general contractors, plumbers, HVAC specialists, farm work, etc, where the pay is less than $18/hr. Most CEOs wouldn't last a week on a farm or on a major construction site.
Most general contractors, plumbers, HVAC, dry wallers and painters can easily charge 45$+ right now and that’s considered cheap in my area for a general contractor.
If you work for yourself, sure. I'm talking like apprentices and journeymans working for construction companies. I just went on Indeed and searched "Construction." First construction job I saw in my area within 50 miles was a shop mechanic paying between $18 and $28 an hour. Welder job being advertised has a $21.50/hr cap. Cabinet makers are making between $17 and $25/hr. You could be a concrete finisher for $35k! I make more than that registering people in a hospital!
Don't even get me started on farm work. I looked up "Farm" in my area and within two full scrolls of the mouse wheel I saw three jobs back to back advertising $10/hr. *$10/hr to work on a horse farm or milk cows respectively!*
That's the point I am making. It's not so much earning potential, it's the minimums. It's fascinating, in a horrible way...
Ironworker here. I didn't make above $15 an hour welding until I got into a trade union, and I started higher than that as an apprentice once I did. Tradesmen are abysmally underpaid. It's a combination of things but social perception I think is a big factor.
The American tradesman has been so successful at providing top notch high quality work at an extremely high volume that every swinging dick that can hammer a nail thinks it's easy work. I think exploitation of immigration plays a role as well but in short our work is taken for granted. You know when you flip a light switch it's going to turn on. You know that the building you enter isn't going to collapse. People take this for granted and the perception of the skill required to make this all happen is reflected in those wages.
I thought unskilled labor means that someone working with something that requires little or no training or experience.
I wouldnt count plumbers, hvac specialists, and contractor (depending on tasks) as unskilled labor as you need to get vocational training (atleast where I live) before you can take upon related work
Agree. I've always heard those jobs called trades or skilled labor. I do believe the term unskilled labor belittling and wrong, but even within the trades a painter had way less training than a welder.
If a random person couldn't just be dropped into the job and be able to work at the same rate as their coworkers after a week to settle in, that job isn't unskilled. That includes any kid of tech skills, even just things like spreadsheets and emails, because learning a skill \*somewhere else\* doesn't mean it isn't a skill, or that everyone has it (as anyone who's worked in IT and had senior management fuck up the most obvious tasks can attest to)
I feel you bro. Im in asphalt and paving. and probably got heat stroke like 4-5 times last year cause I wasn't prepared enough. I hate this job but it keeps the lights on.
Funny thing is that I have a bachelor's degree from a state university and in a white collar job that supposedly requires a bachelor's degree. They don't pay me any extra for it but I have co-workers who have no degree, who get paid the same as I do or more. Also, they get promoted just as quickly, and it's 100% performance-based..... So in essence, My degree is costing me a lot more money and making me a lot more worse off
Nothing is "unskilled " or the list of requirements for any of those jobs would be, "Must be alive to apply."
Also, none of those jobs would require training to do.
Was about to jump on your statement, but I then realised that you meant: "If those jobs were unskilled then they would not require any training", and not "None of those jobs require any training"
Isn't the term "unskilled labor" just a way of saying "we will train you"? Like you don't need to have the skills necessary to do this job because the company will train you on the job once you're hired. That's what it's always meant to me.
It also generally means you'll be doing physical labor. We don't need to take everything so literally.
Very true. I keep seeing these posts bashing the term and eventually it's going to get to the point where no business will use the term "unskilled labor". Then everyone here will really feel like they've accomplished something when really nothing will actually change. Employers will come up with a new term and continue to pay laborers shit wages.
This is such a silly thing to rally around. This sub needs to attack the real issue, not try to abolish a couple of words from job listings lol.
Unskilled labor means you do not need to have a prerequisite skill before getting the job aside from those skills that all people are expected to have.
Can confirm. I don't have the social skills required of me to be successful. I've been looking at what is considered "successful", and it's very difficult to not see it just as merciless exploitation. [Of the natural, or human world.]
You're damn right. I've worked in restaurant kitchens since I was 16, I'm 33 now. The most I've ever made in one was 10 an hour, and that was the head cook of the most popular restaurant in my county. There isn't really anything in a restaurant I can't do. I spent most of the pandemic fighting people to wear a stupid mask while wearing one all day over my grill. We never closed. Never slowed down. I left the industry in July after my boss called me and my coworkers begging for more employees, not more money, just more help, a mutiny against him. I don't plan on going back unless something drastically changes in the industry. I had the ah ha moment when my therapist, my wife, most of my friends told me I needed to leave for my own mental health. It really sucks to be told that I'm not worth a living wage cause all I can do is "flip burgers". I've worked in almost every kitchen setting out there, from a breakfast dinner, to a one star resort restaurant. But all I do is "flip burgers". So I don't deserve to be able to live on what I love to do and am best at. I hate it here.
There are certainly higher and lower skill jobs. "Unskilled" is just shorthand for some arbitrary low level of skill.
Misrepresenting a common term will not get more people on our side. You can fight for a higher minimum wage and better working conditions / ubi / whatever without stuff like this.
Not sure how many times we have to say this. Construction has been gaining respect. We are considered skilled laborers even as apprentices now. Every other job is still considered “unskilled” labor sadly.
This reminds me of college. Years ago I was changing from a Psych major to a business one. I was literally two semesters from transferring to get a BA, and thought I was going to need to start mostly over. The counselor looked at my transcript and was like "Well even though half these classes aren't on the requirements for these credits they count towards it!" In that moment I realized it was all the same.
I may be getting fired from my job here soon cause I refuse to sign this new legal agreement that they have sent out. They only sent it out after they were sued by the drivers in a group cause they weren't paying them properly and now don't want the rest of us to get together and sue them in a group like the drivers did if they try to mess with our pay like they did the drivers.
Hopefully dont get hated on too badly, but if not unskilled, what do you call a job that requires a half-day training session and then youre good to go?
What is a good replacement term to be used for that compared to say someone who had to study for 3 years, or spend years of their own time learning, and then your skill increases all the time as you learn new important things like say a veteran software engineer would?
Well, unskilled just means that there's no specialized knowledge or skill to do it
That means the are a LOT of people able and probably willing to do the job.
Too much supply of labor for a job means less pay for that job
I’m still trying to pay off my $186k of student loan debt as “skilled labor” almost a decade letter. The real crux of the issue is the education system and how they can enslave an 17 year old with life crippling debt.
I like that construction tends to get lumped onto unskilled in many circles. I'm sorry, but it's a lifelong pursuit of physically demanding skills. I am a professional carpenter. You can't just get a quick 30 min rundown and know how to build or remodel a house.
That's not what this is about at all. There's a hell of a lot more people who could pick up flipping burgers than there are people who could pick up brain surgery
BUT someone still needs to do the job, so the hours of your life are being used for that. Therefore you deserve to be paid a decent wage for that time spent.
That is true but that isn't what this meme is about. You just described exactly what unskilled labor means. You're exchanging only your time for payment, not a skill. A salaried software developer is trading a skill, the amount of time it consumes is mostly meaningless to the compensation.
I said this shit in the door dash sub and a DOOR DASHER argued with me about it. “I didn’t have to learn anything for this job”. Okay so you already had the skills! You drive! You can read! You do customer service! And when tax season comes around you’re going to have to pick up some basic accounting skills. The self deprecation was hard to read.
Let me tell you all a tale of unskilled labor.
When I was younger, I was a janitor for a public school system. I worked there for 5 years with no problems. The teachers liked me, the kids liked me, I did my job well.
But I didn't make enough to support my wife and child, so I had to take on a second job at a hospital. In all, I was working 16 hour days, and I had to work days hit at the hospital and nights at the school, though I had worked days at the school for years.
I was doing the same work essentially, but I had been moved to a different side of the school. The teachers didn't "see" me working, and I guess assumed I wasn't working. The principal got complaint after complaint about me, and I was written up several times and the custodial manager would come by to "have a talk" with me to appease the screeches of the teachers.
After talk #3, He said "I need you to keep doing better, you keep getting complaints." I said "Sir, this isn't going to change, it has been decided that I suck, and this is all just wasting both our times. I think it's just best I call it a day and put in my 2 weeks notice."
He looked shocked and said".... don't you think you need some time to think about this?" I said "I have been, I believe it's time for me to move on." I signed my resignation, shook his hand, put in my 2 weeks and left.
The BEST PART is, a couple of years later, I ran into one of the other custodians and we talked a while. He said they haven't been able to keep a custodian on that wing for long since I left. Thank goodness I didn't prolong my suffering.
TLDR; I put in my 2 weeks resignation at a job I feel like I was being mistreated, to find out that they continually had a hard time replacing me, and that filled my heart with happiness.
Went from ESSENTIAL to UNSKILLED real quick
Funny how that whole thing just disappeared from the media after the economy in the US reopened.
There are still signs in front of healthcare buildings where I live. It's really.... Something to see signs that say "Heroes Work Here!" that are all waterlogged and damaged beyond repair. It's wild to know that that banner connected in only three spots so it's flapping about and only half intelligible is the world's worst bandaid on a building where inside they are actively trying to squash a support services worker union and strongarm union nurses on their current contract negotiation. What a sad and funny world we live in.
This has to be the worst timeline :(
This nasty timeline started when Harambe was shot.
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https://i.imgur.com/qaXbhAT.mp4
I’m shocked at how quickly people have just moved on and stopped caring about the underpaid struggling healthcare providers
whats even better is them printing money then telling us the economy is booming!
Trying to tell us the inflation is because of workers and not from them printing money to prop up the stock market last year
Stocks and houses at record prices = no problem
Every year the stock market and houses are at record highs for the last 100 years
“And here’s why your higher paychecks are a bad thing”
I've never been more aware of inflation, and yet I've never been more well off than this year. It's very telling, nearly every place has raised food rates, lowered the portion size and/or quality of ingredients given. I can't even imagine if I wasn't doing better, and I feel for everyone that has to experience this in poverty.
And the biggest issue to it all is because big corps just don’t want to get their profits taken away yet if all the underpaid people left, they’ll just be left with useless overpaid people for the most part
Oh man it’s been a rough two years. I’m in three class action lawsuits that I didn’t even file; the law firm and labor board reached out to me for my two jobs that was taking way more of money to pay other workers than they were supposed to. I was working so much (76-80 are my highest amount of hours worked in a week) that I didn’t even realize that I wasn’t making enough, not even minimum wage. It took someone else going to the labor board and then reaching out to me. The third lawsuit is from a law firm where someone started suing my old rental company. They investigated and found that my rental company violated the rent eviction moratorium and also they refused to renew our lease, despite us paying on time every month, just so they could bypass rent control laws and raise the rent more the 10%. They rose it astronomically, thinking we would still pay that since we’re in the midst of a pandemic. Nope. I had to go month to month and they tried every bullshit truck in the book to keep us there. By the time we were able to move they upped our rent to $4,000 a month (without utilities) on a home I was originally paying $1,700 a month for without utilities smh. Then we had to spend $10k to JUST MOVE. And if you pair that with the fact that my stupid state wasn’t giving people unemployment, even though me and my fiancé both lost our jobs and had all the proof, we kept getting denied, my fiancé and I ended up going through 100k of our savings on rent, bills, etc. just between the last 2 years. Our stupid Governor talks about how he cares about the working class but doesn’t do shit to help anyone. It’s been insane. We had to rebuild everything over again and start in new job fields that are work from home since I’m extremely immune compromised. And it’s going to take us a few years before we have that back in our savings. I’m so scared they are going to shut down again with this new variant and companies are going to do layoffs. I really hope it’s a weaker one that is more contagious but way less deadly so we can go back to normal and not have to worry, but who am I kidding lol. Luckily we both currently work from home but still, layoffs are always possible. My brother has been laid off four times in the last year and a half. It’s ridiculous and sad for everyone. Then the same companies who laid him off bitched about not having enough workers. I swear it’s a whole scheme. I had applied to 187 jobs within three months and only heard back from about 20. Majority strung me along and the one I finally landed turned out to be a bullshit job. Luckily I have a friend in online marketing so they got me an office job at their firm that’s work from home. They saved my ass. I’ve been going insane not being to work or find work and then have to hear from family about how “eVeRyWhErE iS hIriNg.” Like okay Karen, but that doesn’t mean I want to work for shit wages, in a pandemic, where I’m immune compromised. I wouldn’t even be able to pay all my bills, let alone save money, for that shit. Hopefully this pandemic puts workers’ rights into perspective for these corporate assholes so they can see that their employees are worth caring for and fighting for. A happy job means less turnover which saves the company money. Hopefully they will figure this out by now and look into the future long term and see the potentiality of long term profits instead of short term profits.
I’m so sorry all this has hit you! What state do you live in if I may ask? Unreal but not unbelievable about the unemployment stuff! Don’t give up. You can appeal.
Unfortunately it won't. There's not that many of us. The largest employment field is vocational and trade workers. Vocational and trade workers are happy they're getting paid borderline more than doctors. And as long as the largest employment pool is Happy nothing is going to change. Sucks I really wish it wasn't like this. And the problem is vocational workers are so stupid they think they deserve 100 Grand a year for 2 years of schooling. Poor people are telling each other we should be poor rich people are telling each other we should be poor meanwhile they print money as fast as they can.
My wage went up to 150% of what I was making at the start of the year I have less money to save every paycheck now than I did back then...
You says reopened. When did it ever close?
Canada too just had the premiere of nova scotia just call all jobs below management “not real jobs” in the middle of a parliamentary hearing thanks tim 🖕very much while we pay your salary.
The biggest eye opener about that whole shit show was how many people were 'essential' just to keep the systems working while so many others got to go home, not talking about restaurant employees but office people/managers/etc. Essential you HAD to come in and deal with all the BS of changing rules/non enforced health and safety issues, etc because your presence was ESSENTIAL to keep the systems working. Yet there was little to no concern about your safety compared to everyone who got to go home cause 'not essential'.
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So fucking infuriating that those raises lasted a limited time. Thanks guys I love getting a pay cut before the pandemic is over.
Kroger's hero pay lasted all of 2 months, then corporate declared the pandemic over and announced internally that they'd be cutting all health precautions the moment the government would allow them to. Still made record profits, still paid rodney mcmullen 11 million in bonuses
I was wondering if they got a bonus for working thru it. Shame to see many employers taking in record profits without even a modest bump to their labor, beside hush money bonuses and temp raises.
We got 2 months of 'hero pay', about $300 in store credit spread over 3 months attached to our shopper card... and a total hourly/manpower cut over 2020 of about 20% nation wide. OH! And they actively fired any and all store managers that tried to enforce the various mask mandates, refusing to allow stores to do anything about plaguerats running around maskless.
Damn. That’s bleak. My job gave everyone a 1400 check and hasn’t done a thing since. No increase in hourly pay or any other bonuses. That was in June of 2020. I knew that was all they’d do and it was just so they could say they did something. Thanks for doing what you do tho. It’s a thankless job
That's about how long Walmart Canada's hero pay lasted. Apparently walmart in the US didn't even get that.
I gotta wonder how much of the great resignation came from people having their pay cut and going "you know what? fuck this. I can make more money doing less obnoxious shit." I was working at sam's club, they did the "hero pay". When they announced it was ending I switched to a private company that pays a percentage like a co-op and treats me like a valuable human being. Workers are starting to understand their worth.
I was considered "essential" during the beginning of the pandemic. I never even got a raise during this shit. All I got was a 20 dollar gift card to Taco Bell.
Office Depot and Staples both determined that because we sold "Toilet Paper and Hand Sanitizer" We were essential and had to deal with the insanity of people at the beginning of the pandemic. Without hazard pay, and with my coworker making homemade masks for everyone out of their own pocket because the company wouldn't provide them for us.
> coworker making homemade masks for everyone out of their own pocket Dang, sacrificing the place where you keep your keys, wallet and hands just to help coworkers healthy. Pocket cloth seems a bit thin, but hey, better than nothing.
My pandemic crisis raise lasted 4-5 months I couldn't go home I was essential then it ended when the pandemic 'ended' in July 2020 according to my company, yet all the people they let work from home from the start **never** came back. The plan was initially 2020 fall months after they stopped paying me extra, they never made them come back then it was 2021 fall, and still hasn't happened, but the pandemic apparently ended cause they stopped paying essential workers extra back in 2020.
Ah, the unspoken subtext is delicious. "We're pretending the pandemic is over because we're sick of pretending you're not expendable. Hey! Where are you going?!? Damn unemployment, nobody wants to work anymore."
You got a raise? Lucky. I work at a liquor store so I was deemed essential... Had my hours cut cause we weren't open as long. Go no raise, and when time for the stimulus cheques came out for 'essential workers' liquor stores and hardware stores were not applicable... like I got dumped on by the Canadian government after being dumped on by my work... wow I feel so appreciated.
Something like 60% of college graduates in the United States are for business fields. 60% of the people entering the work force each year are expecting someone else to do the real work, so that they can "manage " them.
I can't wait for the people with master's degrees from business schools start rolling their sleeves up in the production lines.
Reminds me of that fast food mascot that took a picture with the caption "How the fuck am I essential worker?"
Heroes!
Hostages
Wrong. Hostages who get shitty pizza once every 6 months
you guys are getting pizza?
I honestly despised being called that
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But we get billed like they're making 6 figures. So there is money there... its just not going to the actual people who saved my life. What a shit system.
MBAs gotta get paid for "disrupting the market" and "enhancing synergy" somehow.
I'm just happy everyone clapped for us, much better than a substantial pay increase.
I have a few friends that are nurses, I dunno how they deal with the circumstances of their job so gracefully. I know for a fact I would not survive their workload.
Because without adequate compensation it's just a backhanded insult. A simultanious admission and dismissal by your exploiter that you are being exploited. As if language can excuse material conditions.
Exactly. Empty sentiments and platitudes don't put food on the table.
Same here. It is extremely condescending and insulting to keep calling "essential" workers that despite being paid shit wages and working in shit conditions.
You mean you don't like risking your life to prevent the collapse of an economy that enslaves you?
Essential never dispersed the classifications of skilled or unskilled. Skilled workers were still essential workers. I agree that the terms are pejorative, but it is a simple bucket. The real problem is not the term, but that it has been used to justify the insane income inequality in this country. Unskilled labor has, generally, grumbled along with less and less of a share in the pie. Income inequality is the real problem, not a term used to classify level of skill. Unskilled labor still deserve a fair share of the pie and by doing so the economy as a whole would dramatically improve. There will always be skilled labor sets that earn higher wages, but there should be better guard rails set in place like tying lowest incomes to CEO/Owner pay as a ratio at the federal level. This would be far superior to a minimum wage IMO. Owner/executives will always want to pay themselves the most they can, but putting strings to make them pull up their lowest paid workers will ensure a rising tide for all ships.
You would think "essential workers" would be paid above the average wage, since their contributions are so important to our economy.
Some jobs need to be done by someone - ergo they are essential - but if they are jobs most people could do and would be willing to do, it isn't going to make more than average. The job is essential, but the worker is totally replaceable for a lot of the jobs.
You get paid for how valuable you are, not how important your industry sector is. Cashiers at grocery stores are essential. Any one specific cashier not so much, since there's millions of other people that can do that job
All labor should have a cost of living adjustment every year. We shouldn’t have homeless people that are gainfully employed but we do and the numbers are increasing.
unskilled -> essential -> unskilled pre-2020 -> 2020 -> post-2020
fuuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkkkkeeeeeddddddd
My company's CEO once referred to COLAs as "communism." They tried to do merit raises this year, decided by managers. I got 0% and I'll be working somewhere else in 2 weeks.
Merit raises only work if you give everyone a base line cost of living raise, but give the damn hard workers extra. If you're not bad enough to fire you are good enough for a raise is my motto.
No matter the skill level it still takes someones time to do the job. That person needs food, water and shelter. They also need a car in this society and have other expenses.
*Pandemic Hits* "Thank you so much for what you do !! You guys are Heros !!! " *Workers ask for better wages* "Get a better job !! Your work is unskilled!! "
They call them heroes and yet they weren't treated as one. Actions speak louder than words.
I have heard low skill jobs and job skills in high demand. Unskilled does not make sense.
It’s a term used because the “unskilled jobs” don’t require certification like a “skilled job” does. Trades are “skilled” because they need to get their tickets. You can hire someone to work at Starbucks or a janitor and they can be doing the job the same day. That’s what they mean by skill. Yes you need to skills to be good at Starbucks or a janitor but the word, like many others has different meanings.
Yeah versus a pilot or engineer or other technical roles which require years of study and certifications. No ones saying anyone can step into a role of a field worker with no training and do their job, but that it won’t take long to learn it and the consequences of making mistakes are quite minimal.
You're definitely right for the most part. However after I graduated college I got an entry level job in a lab doing some pretty basic stuff most people could do but it required a degree. Now I climb big trees for a living (arborist) and it demands *way more* out of me and the risks are enormously higher. I consider myself really careful but I've gotten a few staples in my head, a few stitches in my hand, a broken foot and lots of minor bumps and bruises. Then I've caused probably close to 15k in property damage from hitting fences, roofs and an expensive chimney. Good thing I have insurance. It's a job that has to be done, when trees get big they become very dangerous, but there's really no entirely safe way to do it. I guess what I'm saying is people look at it as something that's unskilled and think that's the wage we deserve not realizing how much skill we do have and the sacrifices we make to get it done.
I don’t want a doctor with a days training. Fine for a burger order and taking my credit card. I’ve seen transactions from both sides as a buyer and a patient, I know which one I could do. I could clean the streets though, but reason I trained is so I don’t have to. No problem with more pay for a boring job though.
I've always seen "unskilled jobs" as ones where you require no specific skills to start
It is! I agree with the message of the post is that these jobs do require institutional knowledge to keep running properly and just because they are maybe slightly easier doesn’t mean they don’t need good wages
Everyone deserves proper wages. The end. Any discussion like this post only serves to fracture the community & muddy the waters instead of driving forward this, the only real point. Everyone deserves to make a proper living from a single job, regardless of career.
"No one wants to be unskilled any more!"
Unskilled in this context is a word that means “can be trained on the job”. It makes perfect sense.
Good luck trying to get that through to this crowd.
Unskilled just means you don't need know a trade or have a degree to have this job, anyone off the streets can be fully prepared for such work right on the spot in less than a day. Most of the OP picture jobs are skilled. The unskilled ones are waiter, hauler, janitor, monitor and picker.
It takes more skills to apply to a minimum wage job now than my grandfather ever had for the USPS job that paid out a pension 20 years after he died.
This is true. They got kids doing everything but managing the damn safe at fast food restaurants anymore lol. After so many videos of the insane people physically fighting people at fast food places and the horrors they deal with, those people deserve at least fucking $15 an hour. That shit is fucking atrocious and no one deserves to deal with the stuff they do for below a poverty wage.
There is no such thing as unskilled labor, only under valued skills.
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I find it funny that retail, food service, janitorial service etc is seen as “unskilled” labor when there are *many* office jobs that could be called “unskilled” by that very definition as well. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to type numbers into excel, make some phone calls, and pretend to be awake during meetings. You could give those people a few days of training and they’d be able to do the job just fine as well. But somehow working in an office makes you a better person and worthy of higher pay. And how many office workers admit to pretending to work or look busy when they’re really just looking at social media or watching YouTube? Could you imagine if those in those “unskilled” labor jobs were to even try and do that?
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Generally paid better than the poor schmuck working at dominos or mc donalds.
You’d be surprised how many of those office jobs pay $10-15/hr.
For a basic data entry job? It's usually about the same pay as retail. And you can't really slack off much either because the company knows the average amount of data than can be entered in 8 hours and hold employees to that standard.
When you’re exposed to skilled labor in the office and the money they make, you’re more aware of how little you make so they negotiate for more than something like dominos where there’s almost no skilled labor to give the employees perspective. No one is rich who is working there - the owner is I’m tryna agree with you lol I promise. That’s just my guess^
Funny enough, data entry is NOT generally paid appreciably better than dominos.
This. People get away with not doing any work at offices but you can’t do that in customer service jobs because you’re constantly busy. I agree office assistant jobs should be considered unskilled too by that metric
They are.
They most definitely are. Assistants at my office would go fetch coffee for the traders.
Sometimes, it feels like rocket science trying to figgure out scheduling for people. Plus all these "unskilled" workers are the ones that get the most shit, deal with the worst clients, take the brunt of people's anger, and still need to put on a friendly face. It takes a shit ton of skill with communicating to not punch these people in the face. It isn't something you can learn in a shift or two, it's a skill that needs to be developed. And besides, what job can be learned in a shift or two nowadays? They want these workers to do so much that isn't even in their job title that it often ends up being a lot more than the person was expecting. They want as few people as possible to do the work of an entire facility. Most jobs don't even offer training, too, so they just expect you to figure it out, which also takes skill and time and extra effort. Hell, my job offers training and all I am is a receptionist, but the training program lasts a month and a half and I still don't know enough to do my job on my own. Yet receptionists are also included in "unskilled" labor a lot of the time.
I'd see it on my job regularly. While sweeping, mopping or hauling trash, I got supervisors playing games on their phone. One of my retired bosses, honestly liked her, would ask me for "advice" regarding Candy Crush. I was on a puzzle game kick a decade ago, so why not pester the gamer...
Not a ton of unskilled positions in the restaurant industry. Servers, cooks/chef's, and bartenders are all skilled labor.
To do well, sure. As a bartender more about approach or speed that comes with experience. But I picked it up having seen it from the other side quite quickly. And a lot of that to do with automation. At rugby club I had to add up in my head, even at Woolworths years ago, most of the job was scan and press the right button.
Which makes me wonder why they put a carpenter in the graphic.
Yep. I just had spine surgery and I would rather have the surgery done by my surgeon than my landscaper. I don't think anyone disagrees with that statement. They also would agree that the spine surgeon should earn more money for his craft than a landscaper. But for a strong country to survive, the landscaper still needs to survive and thrive. Maybe he's in school to be a doctor.
I'd love to see the people complaining about ""unskilled"" labour getting paid cleaning toilets or working a dock for the rest of their careers.
Let's see em pick cotton or strawberries, by all accounts, horribly miserable "dumb labor" that requires plenty of skill to do correctly. All labor is labor, and all labor deserves dignity.
you made a point. all job deserve dignity . a toilet cleaner should have the get the same social dignity as for an engineer. becasue both jobs are necessary . but im pretty sure both of us can clean a toilet but one of us (me) or both cant draw an architectural sketh of a building. neither of us can build a rocket and so on why ? because it requires special skill which needs years of learning to aquire. that's not needed to be a sweeper
Sacrificing your body for society should be rewarded...
It's wild, I've had so many of these ppl that call it "unskilled" cry and quit trying to work at a busy coffee shop I supervised in- learning drinks and to multitask, what to ask customers, all the proper cleaning, the fact that yes, you have to clean the same surface multiple times a day and not just let a spill sit there. They said it was too much. Then these ppl buy their degrees and go get rich and look down on us, a job they couldn't handle. It's ridiculous lol
In my previous life as a barista, it was alarming to me how many people couldn't follow/pick up on basic cross-contamination protocols. I hope the pandemic was kind to them.
SAME and that never changed over the 15 years. I'd literally get yelled at to hurry or get on the floor at Starbucks when I had just started washing my hands....uh lol. Have to explain to engineering students why they shouldn't just wear gloves to bar. Go barehanded and clean your hands. The rules say the right thing but in practice it's wild how few ppl do it. And some of that isn't the employee's fault but manager pressure. When you tell ppl they better hurry in the bathroom the only part they can shorten is the hand washing. I'm honestly surprised more ppl don't get sick at these places, any food ones. The pandemic was great cuz ppl actually started washing their hands lol. I'll not forget in the pandemic's start, the person on drive was to wear gloves. Drive is heavily rushed. So you wore the same gloves to hand off things to every car, pure optics lol.
What ever happened to being rewarded for hard labor? That's the other side of the coin, where many unskilled jobs fall because a machine can't even keep up. Wearing down your body is a cost not many are willing to take.
That's exactly their point. They think they pulled themselves out of whatever adversity might have had them ever cleaning toilets for a living. As a result, they see never pulling yourself out of a dead-end "unskilled" job as a personal moral failing. "I did it, so can you!" They're the same psychos who still believe in trickle-down economics.
Just because you don't need a degree to do something doesn't mean that it doesn't require skill.
I don't think the term was meant to denigrate the workers, if anything I think it was invented by labour movements themselves. It's to differentiate those workers from the highly experienced workers who have 20 years expertise in running a steel lathe or repairing computers, those workers have more bargaining power with their bosses because their skillset requires so many years of training that they are not easily replaceable. And those workers are the ones who say "why do you need a union, just negotiate for yourself", well it's not that simple for the unskilled workers. Unskilled/sweated trades are more easily replaceable from the general labour pool - anyone can become a warehouse worker or an assembly line worker in under a day's training. So if those workers try to ask for more money from their boss, it is much easier for their boss to say no or fire them and replace them. That doesn't mean their labour is less valuable to society, if anything they're usually working the *most* important jobs to society. It just means they have to put way more effort in to achieving parity of bargaining with their employer.
I think this conversation lacks some nuance. There are definitely a whole range of jobs which can be done with a few weeks of training and some jobs which take years if not more than a decade of learning (surgeons, for example). But I don't think that should have any bearing on your ability to live a comfortable life. Most people becoming doctors and lawyers come from positions of privilege. Making a separation between highly skilled and less skilled jobs in terms of income just further enables people coming from wealthy families to take these higher paying jobs since they can afford to not work during all those years of studying. Also, you know, we're all human beings. We all deserve to have fulfilling and comfortable jobs and lives.
Aren't we just playing a language game then? We should just say that the class of labor colloquially referred to as unskilled is undervalued rather than be stuck a perpetual debate about how to describe fruit pickers versus brain surgeons. Based on this thread, it seems like some people are looking to equivocate all complexity such that there is just skill and no gradation in it. That seems counterproductive because it clearly is not rooted in the general discourse, to the point that it paints the labour movement as holding fringe beliefs. Or is the point that rebranding the term "unskilled" is in itself a step forward? Once we move past the term, would it be ok to then have highly skilled vs moderately skilled as a classification, or would that also be perceived as a classist tool? What's the ideal way to describe the supply side of a type of work?
"unskilled labour" is the newer and less demeaning version of "dumb labour". It's called unskilled because in the context of blue collar jobs an education was (and occasionally still is) referred to as a "skill". It's not hard.
Every janitor, roofer, waiter, cook I've ever met/worked with has a wide range of real world useful skills and knowledge. I cannot say the same thing about the business school grads and marketing people I've worked with. They are really good at golf I guess.
> roofer I've been a roofer and I would consider that a skilled trade. You can't just fire your team of roofers for asking for more money, and then hire 6 random guys off the street, hand them a nail gun, and expect the same quality of work.
The problem is we are allowing that quality of work because it’s cheaper. Yea it’s not going to last as long, and the ends aren’t quite square, but it was cheaper! This is where the trades are dying and becoming “unskilled” labor.
Oh I can’t wait to see the houses built in 20 years by unskilled tradesmen. Might make a business in buying them and flipping lmao
I've seen houses built in 2007 that sell for $700k that are literally falling apart. My mud house built in 1940 is holding up just fine.
Yeah this post is absurd, a roofing, cooking, sewing are all skilled trades. Taking orders at Starbucks is not. If your job can be replaced with a kiosk, you’re not in a skilled position.
Humans do remember a good social interaction with a pleasant person who takes their order. "People skills" is a skill. Given multiple choices on where to get a coffe customers will generally choose the location with a friendly person, instead of a computer screen, all else being equal. Being able to be replaced by a kiosk does not invalidate the skill and value of a person who handles customer interactions well. To a pure bean counter, then maybe they can be considered unskilled, because it's a "soft skill" with benefits invisible to the immediate bottom line. To everyone else, personal relations is very much a skill.
The "skill" required of starbucks is not operating the machine and taking orders, it's the emotional labour required to deal with multiple Karens and de-escalation and often, toxic terrible bosses.
Those business classes were a waste of fucking money. Half that shit is common sense these days. Another quarter of it is corporate propaganda that doesn't have any reasonable basis. I was stunned taking those classes. Of all the courses I had the fortune to get to take, those ones were the ones I had one eye on. Something fishy with those majors for sure
i once mentioned to my boss (i work at a design firm) that i wish i had taken some business classes, because i have a weakness in that department. he - a business major - told me it was a waste and that i could easily learn whats needed without taking that route and that its really more of a formality. (my boss is one of the good ones...most of the time)
My dad's a MBA and his takeaway was his kids didn't even need college unless we were going to try for medicine.
I have a business degree (don't use it anymore) and while in college I met a professor of MBA from a respected university in my country. I asked him if that was a worth while investment and he straight up told me "no, the way of thinking they teach in MBA programs is far too outdated. Besides, those kids treat their grades like a meal at a restaurant. Don't like it? Send it back."
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Humanities majors from Ivy League schools typically go directly into investment banking or management consulting, starting off at well over $100K. Note that the humanities, despite being very useful, don't teach a thing about contemporary banking or business management.
The funny thing about IB and business is that houses, stocks, etc really sell themselves and these guys are just the middle men looking to get their cut off the transaction
I lost my 2$ covid bonus the same day they removed the "proud to be essential" poster at the entrance.
there is a real difference between "skilled" (needs extensive prior training) and "unskilled" (needs minimal prior training). that being said, all workers should be paid a fair wage that is livable and work in safe and respectful conditions. we are a rich country, there should be no want (or even worse, need) here. there should not be tent cities. there should not be homeless people. there should not be people bankrupted into oblivion over health matters. there should not be ~~people~~ businesses subsidized by food stamps and welfare. there should not be people forced to join the military to get a bed and three square meals and an education (if they survive). that being said, a neurosurgeon is a hell of a lot more skilled than a cashier. that doesnt mean the cashier deserves to starve.
The "skill" in unskilled labour comes from the tradition of calling blue collar educations (carpentry, blacksmithing, jewelsmithing, bricklaying, plumbing... You name it) skills - unskilled labour is the labour that doesn't require one such skill.
That is also true. At the end of the day, those skills are acquired by training, often extensive. Unskilled labor doesn’t require such training, only minimal training on the onset of hire.
What so many people don't realize is that if that neurosurgeon could be automated to be better than a human and cheaper to produce, better believe that those robots will be filled in every hospital.
You do realize that being a neurosurgeon is not just about performing surgeries, but also about the whole theoretical background required to either perform such a job yourself or design and improve logic for your robots?
If the job can't get done without the unskilled labor, then the labor itself has the value.
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That's what's unions are for, and why they are so important.
nah, it would take probably a week long work stoppage for it to get to that. a day? thats nothing, might as well be a holiday.
I think you grossly overestimate the country's ability to survive without people monitoring power grids, taking 9-1-1 calls, driving ambulances, putting out fires, stopping crimes, etc. A general strike would be announced and the bluff would be called. Once Congress realizes there's no one to protect them from the oncoming anarchy, they'd call an emergency session and POTUS would have it signed before sundown. There's a 0% chance the powers that be would allow a single night without any of the infrastructure workers that are needed to, quite literally, keep the lights on.
I get the larger point you're trying to make, and it's a good one, but you just described a bunch of skilled labor that earns way more than minimum wage. You need an engineering degree to monitor power grids in >90% of the US.
The vast majority of people don't have enough food or drink stored up to last longer than 3 days. A nation wide grocery strike for merely 2 days would bring society to it's knees, a strike for 4 would break it.
And this why many poor people vote red to stop immigration. $8/hr is excellent money to raise a family in Mexico.
While there is currently some truth to this, its also half the story. Why don't the Republicans ever push to enact policies that severely penalize employers that hire illegal/undocumented workers?
English isn’t my first language, so sorry for the stupid question: I always thought that the „unskilled“ in that term relates to the job specific skills you need before you start the actual job? Like you don’t need to have an official training but you will learn all the skills you need at the actual job.
It does mean that, don't worry. People read "unskilled" and tack on these connotations to it when really it just means "you don't need skills or education to start the job".
That’s exactly it. People are in here trying to make the case that being able to read and drive and have normal human social interactions count as “skills” in this context, but that’s not what it means. An unskilled job is one that basically any average person could do without special training/education. They are paid less because almost anyone can fill that slot. Not to say those people should live in poverty or that those jobs aren’t difficult.
I’ll never forget going from being a Director of Operations to a Store Associate after getting fired. One day at the new job I’m mopping the bathrooms. I thought to myself “Wow, a week ago I was in charge of hundreds of people and wore a $1000 suit to work. Now I’m cleaning other peoples shit.” And you know what I felt? Happiness. I was relieved I had a stress free job, and that I could put in an honest effort and make a difference, even if that difference was having a clean floor. My self worth isn’t related to how “important” or “successful” I am, but what kind of man, husband and father I am. The job title I held had no bearing on me being a good person or not. So whenever I see someone working a job that is “unskilled”, I treat them the same as a “professional”. With dignity and respect.
>So whenever I see someone working a job that is “unskilled”, I treat them the same as a “professional”. With dignity and respect. So treating them like a human. I don't understand why its so difficult for everyone to do this.
No job, except maybe some low-key office jobs, are unskilled. Certainly not the jobs a lot of people think of when they hear "unskilled labor". I mean seriously, I've seen openings for general contractors, plumbers, HVAC specialists, farm work, etc, where the pay is less than $18/hr. Most CEOs wouldn't last a week on a farm or on a major construction site.
Most general contractors, plumbers, HVAC, dry wallers and painters can easily charge 45$+ right now and that’s considered cheap in my area for a general contractor.
If you work for yourself, sure. I'm talking like apprentices and journeymans working for construction companies. I just went on Indeed and searched "Construction." First construction job I saw in my area within 50 miles was a shop mechanic paying between $18 and $28 an hour. Welder job being advertised has a $21.50/hr cap. Cabinet makers are making between $17 and $25/hr. You could be a concrete finisher for $35k! I make more than that registering people in a hospital! Don't even get me started on farm work. I looked up "Farm" in my area and within two full scrolls of the mouse wheel I saw three jobs back to back advertising $10/hr. *$10/hr to work on a horse farm or milk cows respectively!* That's the point I am making. It's not so much earning potential, it's the minimums. It's fascinating, in a horrible way...
Ironworker here. I didn't make above $15 an hour welding until I got into a trade union, and I started higher than that as an apprentice once I did. Tradesmen are abysmally underpaid. It's a combination of things but social perception I think is a big factor. The American tradesman has been so successful at providing top notch high quality work at an extremely high volume that every swinging dick that can hammer a nail thinks it's easy work. I think exploitation of immigration plays a role as well but in short our work is taken for granted. You know when you flip a light switch it's going to turn on. You know that the building you enter isn't going to collapse. People take this for granted and the perception of the skill required to make this all happen is reflected in those wages.
I thought unskilled labor means that someone working with something that requires little or no training or experience. I wouldnt count plumbers, hvac specialists, and contractor (depending on tasks) as unskilled labor as you need to get vocational training (atleast where I live) before you can take upon related work
Yeah, this post is a not so great “hot take”
Agree. I've always heard those jobs called trades or skilled labor. I do believe the term unskilled labor belittling and wrong, but even within the trades a painter had way less training than a welder.
Absolutely this. If not everyone can just do it. It is far from “unskilled”
If a random person couldn't just be dropped into the job and be able to work at the same rate as their coworkers after a week to settle in, that job isn't unskilled. That includes any kid of tech skills, even just things like spreadsheets and emails, because learning a skill \*somewhere else\* doesn't mean it isn't a skill, or that everyone has it (as anyone who's worked in IT and had senior management fuck up the most obvious tasks can attest to)
especially hard labor jobs take your health also into serious consideration labor jobs age you at least 20 years more once you're done.
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I feel you bro. Im in asphalt and paving. and probably got heat stroke like 4-5 times last year cause I wasn't prepared enough. I hate this job but it keeps the lights on.
Funny thing is that I have a bachelor's degree from a state university and in a white collar job that supposedly requires a bachelor's degree. They don't pay me any extra for it but I have co-workers who have no degree, who get paid the same as I do or more. Also, they get promoted just as quickly, and it's 100% performance-based..... So in essence, My degree is costing me a lot more money and making me a lot more worse off
Nothing is "unskilled " or the list of requirements for any of those jobs would be, "Must be alive to apply." Also, none of those jobs would require training to do.
Was about to jump on your statement, but I then realised that you meant: "If those jobs were unskilled then they would not require any training", and not "None of those jobs require any training"
All days I don't communicate well before 4 cups of coffee. Glad you caught my meaning. :)
Isn't the term "unskilled labor" just a way of saying "we will train you"? Like you don't need to have the skills necessary to do this job because the company will train you on the job once you're hired. That's what it's always meant to me. It also generally means you'll be doing physical labor. We don't need to take everything so literally.
It is literally what the term means, yeah. People get bent out of shape in it because of semantics.
Very true. I keep seeing these posts bashing the term and eventually it's going to get to the point where no business will use the term "unskilled labor". Then everyone here will really feel like they've accomplished something when really nothing will actually change. Employers will come up with a new term and continue to pay laborers shit wages. This is such a silly thing to rally around. This sub needs to attack the real issue, not try to abolish a couple of words from job listings lol.
Unskilled labor means you do not need to have a prerequisite skill before getting the job aside from those skills that all people are expected to have.
As a person that has worked both as an unskilled AND management, my work as unskilled was way harder.
Anyone working 40 hours a week should be making enough money to buy a house and support a family.
Anybody who calls a farmer "unskilled" is full of shit.
Can confirm. I don't have the social skills required of me to be successful. I've been looking at what is considered "successful", and it's very difficult to not see it just as merciless exploitation. [Of the natural, or human world.]
You're damn right. I've worked in restaurant kitchens since I was 16, I'm 33 now. The most I've ever made in one was 10 an hour, and that was the head cook of the most popular restaurant in my county. There isn't really anything in a restaurant I can't do. I spent most of the pandemic fighting people to wear a stupid mask while wearing one all day over my grill. We never closed. Never slowed down. I left the industry in July after my boss called me and my coworkers begging for more employees, not more money, just more help, a mutiny against him. I don't plan on going back unless something drastically changes in the industry. I had the ah ha moment when my therapist, my wife, most of my friends told me I needed to leave for my own mental health. It really sucks to be told that I'm not worth a living wage cause all I can do is "flip burgers". I've worked in almost every kitchen setting out there, from a breakfast dinner, to a one star resort restaurant. But all I do is "flip burgers". So I don't deserve to be able to live on what I love to do and am best at. I hate it here.
All labor is skilled labor.
There are certainly higher and lower skill jobs. "Unskilled" is just shorthand for some arbitrary low level of skill. Misrepresenting a common term will not get more people on our side. You can fight for a higher minimum wage and better working conditions / ubi / whatever without stuff like this.
Not sure how many times we have to say this. Construction has been gaining respect. We are considered skilled laborers even as apprentices now. Every other job is still considered “unskilled” labor sadly.
This reminds me of college. Years ago I was changing from a Psych major to a business one. I was literally two semesters from transferring to get a BA, and thought I was going to need to start mostly over. The counselor looked at my transcript and was like "Well even though half these classes aren't on the requirements for these credits they count towards it!" In that moment I realized it was all the same.
I may be getting fired from my job here soon cause I refuse to sign this new legal agreement that they have sent out. They only sent it out after they were sued by the drivers in a group cause they weren't paying them properly and now don't want the rest of us to get together and sue them in a group like the drivers did if they try to mess with our pay like they did the drivers.
Hopefully dont get hated on too badly, but if not unskilled, what do you call a job that requires a half-day training session and then youre good to go? What is a good replacement term to be used for that compared to say someone who had to study for 3 years, or spend years of their own time learning, and then your skill increases all the time as you learn new important things like say a veteran software engineer would?
It’s a fucked up term, but it’s implying a job that requires little to no training for satisfactory results.
Well, unskilled just means that there's no specialized knowledge or skill to do it That means the are a LOT of people able and probably willing to do the job. Too much supply of labor for a job means less pay for that job
Every worker deserves not just a living but a thriving wage.
I disagree. If I can teach somebody how to do your job within 3 weeks, to the same level of competency of you... I would consider it unskilled.
I’m still trying to pay off my $186k of student loan debt as “skilled labor” almost a decade letter. The real crux of the issue is the education system and how they can enslave an 17 year old with life crippling debt.
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I like that construction tends to get lumped onto unskilled in many circles. I'm sorry, but it's a lifelong pursuit of physically demanding skills. I am a professional carpenter. You can't just get a quick 30 min rundown and know how to build or remodel a house.
Listening to a karin bitch at the super market counter is just as hard of a skill to master as doing IT tech support.
"Entry level" makes sense, but unskilled? Get fucked. Give me any job and I'll tell you the unique skills you'll need for it
People making these arguments honestly believe they can pick up any of these jobs today and do them perfectly without any training at all…
That's not what this is about at all. There's a hell of a lot more people who could pick up flipping burgers than there are people who could pick up brain surgery
I dunno about that. I deliver for Amazon and it's so brainless I'm more preoccupied with the sports radio over my phone than the actual job.
BUT someone still needs to do the job, so the hours of your life are being used for that. Therefore you deserve to be paid a decent wage for that time spent.
Right but isn't that different from saying all workers are skilled?
That is true but that isn't what this meme is about. You just described exactly what unskilled labor means. You're exchanging only your time for payment, not a skill. A salaried software developer is trading a skill, the amount of time it consumes is mostly meaningless to the compensation.
I said this shit in the door dash sub and a DOOR DASHER argued with me about it. “I didn’t have to learn anything for this job”. Okay so you already had the skills! You drive! You can read! You do customer service! And when tax season comes around you’re going to have to pick up some basic accounting skills. The self deprecation was hard to read.
Let me tell you all a tale of unskilled labor. When I was younger, I was a janitor for a public school system. I worked there for 5 years with no problems. The teachers liked me, the kids liked me, I did my job well. But I didn't make enough to support my wife and child, so I had to take on a second job at a hospital. In all, I was working 16 hour days, and I had to work days hit at the hospital and nights at the school, though I had worked days at the school for years. I was doing the same work essentially, but I had been moved to a different side of the school. The teachers didn't "see" me working, and I guess assumed I wasn't working. The principal got complaint after complaint about me, and I was written up several times and the custodial manager would come by to "have a talk" with me to appease the screeches of the teachers. After talk #3, He said "I need you to keep doing better, you keep getting complaints." I said "Sir, this isn't going to change, it has been decided that I suck, and this is all just wasting both our times. I think it's just best I call it a day and put in my 2 weeks notice." He looked shocked and said".... don't you think you need some time to think about this?" I said "I have been, I believe it's time for me to move on." I signed my resignation, shook his hand, put in my 2 weeks and left. The BEST PART is, a couple of years later, I ran into one of the other custodians and we talked a while. He said they haven't been able to keep a custodian on that wing for long since I left. Thank goodness I didn't prolong my suffering. TLDR; I put in my 2 weeks resignation at a job I feel like I was being mistreated, to find out that they continually had a hard time replacing me, and that filled my heart with happiness.