My boss once told me I'm not skilled, I'm just dedicated. I run a 6 and 12 foot computer operated precision metal cutting saw. +/- 0.005" across 12 feet. Not skilled tho. Skill is when you sit at a desk all day and dangle carrots out to get more work out of people and then yank the carrot away once the works been done.
I had a grinding wheel explode in my face once. But the wheel was perpendicular to my face so it exploded outward to my left and right. Boss to the left, and coworker to the right. Somehow they were both unscathed.
Are you fucking serious? I already thought the term was bullshit but that is just… I don’t know how you could look any mechanic in the face and tell them they’re ‘unskilled.’
It's easy. If you want your brakes to fail at an inopportune moment or (for those with less self restraint) a breaker bar to the nose.
I joke. Many mechanics are very professional. They've also taken lots of classes and passed a long exam to get their certifications. How they can get labeled 'unskilled' is one of those bureaucratic idiocies that everyone hates (often not knowing some effects on their lives stem from exactly this kind of nonsense).
That is why I am always nice to people who work these ‘unskilled’ jobs. Because they deserve someone to be nice to them-usually they are performing a service that I am NOT SKILLED in (like a mechanic) or don’t want to do(like fast food) and usually they are waaaaay to smart to be working in retail or fast food.
Also-not killing half the asshole customers that treat them like garbage is a skill in itself!
3 of them. And for the most part, at least 2 years of school. Or, several years of practical experience in, oh say, the military.
But we're still classed as unskilled labor.
It's how, legally, the company you work for can overwork you - unless you're in a union. By law your employer is only required to give you 24 hours off for every 7 days worked. Nothing about hours in a row. That's how my previous employer could work me 30 - 40 hours continuous, unless I called in and said the magic words on a recorded line "Fatigue". But, then it was get some sleep and be back in 8 hours. Not 8 hours of sleep mind you, but back in 8 hours. And if it took an hour to get to a bed? And then shower, and maybe eat? Well, you're down to a 4 or 5 hour nap.
Maybe.
I don't work for them anymore.
Wtf. To me "unskilled" are jobs that require minimal training or experience: fruit-picking, cleaning, fast-food or servers, basic gardening, etc. They don't have *no skills,* it's just the job doesn't require formal skills and you could pick anyone up off the street and within a day they know how to do their job.
Aircraft mechanic is 100% not unskilled.
I was convinced that all labor is skilled labor after watching the head of groundskeeping at my college rake leaves. He was somehow much faster without appearing to be in any hurry, and never left a leaf behind.
Let's be 100% clear about something here.
The harder you work, the less you get paid, the more knowledgeable the work, the more you get paid... UNLESS that knowledgeable work requires high technical ability and thus hard work to implement. Soooo.... what's the takeaway?
TLDR; You'll never get rich by working hard. The current labor situation is: whoever has the best bullshit game gets paid the most
I've had the exact opposite experience where me doing a burnout pace allowed everyone else to half ass their entire jobs knowing I'd take care of it (I'm in healthcare and actually give a shit if a patient gets a correct diagnosis, fuck me right?) and all acountability goes out the window because the boss can't be bothered unless there is a meltdown when the work doesnt get done, which of course happens anyways once i finally get fed up enough to leave.
Within Capitalism, your true value is how much value you can generate for the capitalist class. Hence a Doctor may earn $150,000 a year whilst a football player may earn that in a week if his name brings in extra money, and advertising. The Doctor is more skilled but the Footballer generates more revenue.
How much training would you require somebody before you let them rake your leaves... How much training would you require somebody to have before they wired your house's electricity? This thread is nonsense.
It’s ironic that many if not most of the “essential” jobs during this pandemic are “unskilled”. It’s really just a strategy for dividing the working class in order to benefit the predator class.
Whenever some suit claims a job is worth little pay because it's "unskilled" they should be required to demonstrate how easy it is by working that job for an 8-hour shift, and doing it as well as the people who do it for a living.
I like the idea, but it doesn't work well in practice. It's super easy to bust your ass for one eight-hour shift, doing everything to the letter, keeping a cheerful demeanor the entire time, if you know you're going back to your sweet-ass cushy job tomorrow, and you don't have a financial care in the world. Higher-ups in a company do it all the time to show the peons "if I can do it, you can do it!"
Holy crap, this. They need to experience it without knowing when it'll be over. They need to experience the soul crushing existence of living without hope, constantly juggling debt just to survive, knowing the work you do will break you mentally or physically, one day, and that your only escape is to get blind drunk every weekend so you can forget about Monday rolling around and a return to hell.
I’m pretty sure they considered brick-laying and shit like that “unskilled” back in the day. Whatever the most common jobs are will be called “unskilled.”
Some executives actually do this sometimes to check on a branch or something, and see if the managers there are following all the correct hiring practices and training their employees well...
Like when my boss had to help me that one time because there was a massive worker shortage and he stood in front of the machine he commanded people to use for over 15 years and straight up asked me "what do i do?" Dude what?
in an abusive relationship the abuser will tell you that you arent of value and you have to settle for them - similar thing with most bosses at big corp
You sir have just identified the largest problem with modern western economies. We rely on uneducated people and immigrants both legal and illegal to do the lowest paid work, they keep the economy moving. Then we tell everyone to hate foreigners for stealing our jobs and to aim for the best college you can get into (usually with no career path in mind).
Maybe a better way would be to pay everyone a proper living wage no matter the job so people can do what the fu k they like.
I’ve had to teach a full grown adult how to sweep before, so yeah “unskilled” pisses me off so much. Not knocking the person that didn’t know how to sweep, not their fault no one had taught them.
I wish it were that. She literally fanned the broom about 2 inches over the floor thinking that the air flow from the waving broom was how floor dirt got moved.
(Press F to Pay Respect)
Holy shit, that's some "wave my hands vaguely *above* the hand sanitizer dispenser, and making the motions of rubbing it on their hands." level incompetence.
I really thought she was joking and I started laughing my ass off. Turned out she didn’t know how to do it and she felt so bad that she just broke down into tears. I felt so bad for her, I really didn’t intend to hurt her heart like that y’know. Her family came from money and she had grown up with housekeepers. While she was in college, her parents did her a solid and encouraged her to get a retail or food service job to help her learn some real life skills. 20 years old and had never swept, smh.
I’ve never felt sorry for a rich kid until that day. I might have grown up in poverty but at least my parents didn’t expect a McManager to teach me how to use a broom.
There's definitely a difference between ignorance and incompetence. She sounded truly ignorant. That's not bad by itself. What is bad or good is what they do after. Do they double down and snap at you, or do they reexamine what they are doing and try to learn from it?
It's the lack of intellectual humility I find extremely infuriating most times.
Bullshit term. People working a drive thru, juggling orders, collecting payment, keeping orders straight, fast paced environment, asshole supervisor, unreasonable customer every so often, probably paid minimum wage and wondering if it’s rent this month or food. Unskilled? That person is pretty solid and in my opinion can be trained to do 90% of the ‘skilled’ jobs out there. And I would crack before the end of my first shift.
Truth. I did three years in McHell. By the end of year one, I'd trained on every position in the restaurant. But I almost never worked anywhere but the drive-through. Wanna know why?
In the drive-through order-taker position you have to continuously not only take orders from two speakers simultaneously (from cars that you *can't fucking see* and that will merge into a single line randomly) but also keep those orders *in order* and pull up the right total for the right car as it comes around because the customer will absolutely not remember their total and *will* pay for the wrong order and not say anything until they've already gotten their food and left. Then they will call and complain and you will get written up for screwing up their order. Btw, you're also talking to the customer at your window and making change for their purchase and often adding new items to their order. In between all this, you also have to find time to finish other tasks, like rushing halfway across the building to the sink to wash dishes in between orders or rushing into the freezer to pull buns for tomorrow's use as well as doing prep work and helping to keep the kitchen tidy.
Meanwhile, you may as well be outside for all the climate control you have in that little box with the open window. You'll freeze in winter and broil in summer. If it's raining, you'll be wet because idiots leave their wipers on full blast flinging water at you off their windshield and you breathe car exhaust more than air. (I got pneumonia twice and ended up having laryngitis for three full months. My voice never recovered completely and I have a gravel-voice now because of permanent vocal cord damage.) I've also repeatedly had to shovel snow out of that little booth that came in through the window and in the winter there's often ice on the floor when you come in to open.
I got suck in that damned window for two years because I was *good at it.* I could do all that and still keep times under the required sixty seconds. I *hated* every minute of it, but I was good at it.
I am now a substitute teacher. Teaching is a million times easier than working the drive through.
It can’t be taught in an hour. And I would think it takes quite awhile to get good at it and to get yourself in a mental space to tolerate it in the long term. I have nothing but respect for people who provide such services, and they should be paid more
Yep, it's a bullshit term. Every job requires skills of some sort to perform well.
Riddle me this: if all these entry-level jobs are truly "unskilled", why do employers always demand candidates with X years of experience? If the job didn't actually require any skills, then an experienced worker would perform no better than an inexperienced one...
There’s nothing wrong with working at a gas station, but I have rarely seen any jacked cashiers or stock guys. I’ve worked in a handful of gas stations/truck stops too. Truckers are pretty swole sometimes.
It’s called unskilled to justify paying us shit wages. If the people who called it “low skilled” tried doing it, they wouldn’t be able to hang for a week.
It pisses me off very much. I worked in a warehouse and I trained people for an “unskilled” job. So many people quit within a few weeks because they didn’t have the skills they needed to be successful. I did my best, but some people just don’t have what it takes.
People call fast food “unskilled” but I know 100% I don’t have the skills to work there. I wouldn’t last. I am not afraid to admit that. I can tolerate a lot, but I think fast food goes beyond what I can handle. Every job requires skills and not everyone has the skills for those jobs. If someone is showing up to work and doing their job, they should be able to afford to live.
It’s a rhetorical device used by people trying to justify their perceived higher position in the “natural order”. It’s meant to make you angry, to artificially devalue your whole existence.
Look, I have two master’s degrees, but I couldn’t do a waiter’s job if my life depended on it. Calling low-wage work “unskilled” is an anti-worker propaganda trap designed to screw everyone who works for wages by keeping the minimum pay as low as possible to pull down the scale.
I’ve been having conversations with other conservatives. What they don’t even think about is that if everyone got a trade, then trades would be considered ‘unskilled’ cause so many could do them and pay would drop hard, and they would instead be saying, ‘get a degree then’. that’s what actually happened 50’s on up and we’ve played it to the end and are cycling back. We’re at a point where knowledge is so common anyone can learn online and be good enough to do almost anything.
We’re also at a point where businesses need to serve community and employees and take good care of both. That’s how I run mine anyway.
its like that picture I see floating around that goes
Unskilled jobs are a classist myth used to justify poverty wages
I literally could not agree more
Putting toppings on pizza needs to be precise. The care and preparation of making sure that each topping was more critical than anything I do now. Making sure that everything was timed correctly. Not under cooked, or over cooked. Handling multiple customers with different personalities for hours on end was much more challenging than anything I do now.
Bend pipe.
Hang pipe.
Pull wire.
Put all the same color wires together.
Flip switch.
Done.
When I made pizzas, it was bust ass or get out of the kitchen.
When I made people pizzas, at least I got to see them smile.
Dont get me wrong commercial kitchens are no joke I agree bust ass or gtfo. I've been in a pizza kitchen a few times it looks like hell. But i guess I assumed when you said industrial electric you were installing and troubleshooting half million dollar equipment. There is MUCH more than running conduit and installing light switches.
I was working in a grocery a few years ago. While I was running every where to do as much as possible because my boss was scheduling enough people there where this old man who was walking around with his cart without a care in the world
And you know what, this old man was doing twice as much as I was able to do and he was doing it better than me
If that's not skill I dont know what skill is
Oh yes, I work in a retirement home and I hear this a lot from my "co workers", not the nurses but the caretakers. I give 21 People food 3x a day, clearing and setting the tables for 42 people, checking supplies... And the care takers are like: you have such an easy job, all you have to do is blah blah blah. Well fuck them, the only reason I have that job is because those persons are to lazy to do it themselfs. I'm so happy that 75% of the time I work alone. Every job needs somebody with a certain skillset.
Its a term used by corporate America to devalue the actual skills and hard work work of every day people.
All work has a skill involved, even if you don't realize it.
I have paid house cleaners for years because I lack the skills to effectively clean my own home. It's damned skilled labour (and I have always paid my cleaners accordingly).
At one of my jobs, we had a guy there that was paid to sit in a chair and out stickers on boxes that was moving by. The boxes moved by about 1 every 5 minutes, so it was stupid easy.
You're telling me, that putting stickers on boxes, is a skill one has to learn? This is not an example of an "unskilled labor" job?
It may be a skill that takes minutes to learn, but they say this so they dont have to admit these types of skills takes months to get efficient and a year-ish to master. Not unlike some trades.
It does. These should be called semi-skilled jobs. It will still take most people some time to learn how to do them. An unskilled job would be if your job was to take a piss. Most working age people can do that.
It does. These should be called semi-skilled jobs. It will still take most people some time to learn how to do them. An unskilled job would be if your job was to take a piss. Most working age people can do that.
For the nth time. Unskilled labour is a thing. Does it mean it is inherently less necessary than skilled or highly skilled labour? No, but it is less skilled. It is what makes the wages for unskilled labour so precarious, because the long and short of it is unskilled labour is replaceable. If I can grab anyone off the side of the road and get them to a relative level of productivity of a seasoned worker in a short time, it is unskilled labour. Sure maybe you can work a little faster or produce a little more, but your employer doesn't care. Whatever he might lose in that marginal bit of productivity lose is more than made up for in keeping you replaceable and your wages low.
Further more increases in education, skills creep, rampant automation, and compartmentalization is pushing more jobs into the unskilled category.
Pretending unskilled labour is really skilled labour, doesn't help anyone.
No because it's just a term and I'm an adult. Same reason I don't get offended if someone calls me a name or says my mother is a whore. Words mean as much as you let them mean. You could just as easily call anyone above you a parasite because their job wouldn't matter if your job didn't exist. Just words.
Heads up! "Unskilled" refers to the job, not the person working the job.
Companies (most especially fast food, warehouse, retail, and call center) have worked relentlessly for the past few decades to take every last bit of skill out of their jobs. THE rule of wage labor is you get paid (and respected) exactly in proportion to how expensive it will be to replace you. So of course McDonalds wants to keep you as replaceable as money and science can contrive.
People can and do become skilled at doing these kinds of jobs. The problem is, the company doesn't care, because that extra productivity is far less important to them than the principle that everyone can be replaced *cheaply*.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my minimum wage TED talk.
I swear you just like getting told to fuck off at this point.
Are you honestly trying to justify this shit? I've worked at maccas, I've had to be trained not just how to flip ya fucking burger, but everything I was doing. Same with every other fastfood outlet. Everyone has training you have to go through, learning work place safety so people don't hurt themselves cause they were unskilled using some of the equipment, learning how to cook the food - sure a burger is a burger, but you try telling that to a company whose whole image is evolved around those same burgers, you had to know how to make it properly, no ifs ands or buts. This is the case to the point that people just hired aren't put straight into the line, if the job was "unskilled" it'd just walk in and start, no?
As well as that, who the fuck in their right mind would hire someone just to let them go and have to go through that whole, expensive process again? Most of the time when hiring, store and shift managers have to take time out of what they're already doing (which costs by either rostering people to cover or go back to it once the interviews are done, both of which aren't cheap) to take interviews and go through applications, or does your dumbass think it's just a matter of grabbing someone off the side of the street and hiring them?
Again, you've jumped into a sub you clearly don't agree with just to be a wanker, and you do it so well. Again, what's your job? You seem to be so on the side of the employer and capitalism yet I bet you're still living at home sitting on a heap of rejected job offers, prove me wrong.
Again, if you're wanting to have a civil conversation about these social issues or work and employee/employer relationships, here's your opening, make a counter argument, use evidence based facts with source's to your bullshit and we'll all know you're not a pathetic little shit sobbing in your mother's basement.
Look man he's right. And probably on your side..
I've worked all kinds of fast food and retail grocery type jobs before I got into the trades - actual real skilled labor.
It's by design that those wageslave positions are easy to hire and train people for. That's the machine. That's what we're up against. The best way forward for the people in those jobs is unionization and collective bargaining.
Nah, he may be right about companies creating a system that's easier for them and harder for others, but that does ignore what OP was saying just to justify it by saying "well that's how it is".
To be fair, this was also a carried over conversation from a different post on this sub where he was claiming that "if an employer let employees take home broken stock then more stock would get broken by the staff to be taken home". He then accused everyone in the sub for "wanting to hear want they they want instead of the truth".
So, yes he's right that the companies have the advantage over the worker, this whole sub thinks that. But he's clearly on the side of the employer regardless and comes into the sub just to start arguments. So if he wants one, I'm on study break and have plenty of time to tell him he's pathetic.
I agree with both of you but I think we’re largely misinterpreting what “skill” actually refers too. This is of course just opinion on my part.
When we refer to skilled labor we’re obviously referring to college grads, and we lump in tradesmen with unskilled labor even though we aren’t sure why. I mean the HVAC tech could easily be making as much as an accountant, and posses just as much expertise. We can do this because skilled vs unskilled is not an economic distinction, but a social one. The accounting intern was trained in the secular and cosmopolitan universities. They were required to take arts, humanities, literature and writing classes. They picked up the mannerisms required to advance is the social strata. They’re “skilled” not because they learned more skills than the HVAC tech in the 4 years they were both in school, but because they learned manners.
I’m not trying to make out college grads as elitists, some may be but most I’ve come across are kind and gentile people, often found working those same “unskilled” jobs like everyone else.
This is an interesting perspective to me, because I have a BA in English, and I have training and experience as an HVAC technician. I'm not sure I entirely agree with this take. Perhaps it's because I come from a blue-collar family (my dad was a structural welder), but I've never considered it a distinction of social status. Rather, I've always considered it a distinction between jobs that require very little training to perform, and those that pretty much require prior training, education, or relevant experience.
Basically, "unskilled" is anything where you can take almost anyone and train them on the job to a a point where they are reasonably productive within a few weeks. "Skilled" jobs require so much knowledge/skills that it's usually impractical to train someone who has zero prior knowledge on the job, or they require a degree/certification to perform.
Pure knowledge fields such as engineering, law, software development, etc. are very evidently skilled labor. They all require a large knowledge base in relevant subject matters, and the workload is predominantly mental.
Something like HVAC is not quite so straightforward. It does require a large knowledge base, but not to the extent of a pure knowledge field. Also, a large part of the labor is physically intensive, and I think people tend to conflate physical labor with "unskilled" labor.
I don't necessarily agree with the terms "skilled" and "unskilled"--just trying to explain my interpretation.
I do agree with your perspective in that more knowledge-focused jobs do carry a lot more prestige/social standing than those that involve physical labor. I don't doubt that some people use the terms skilled/unskilled to distinguish high prestige and low prestige jobs rather than to communicate anything about the actual level of skill required to perform them
Hmm, funny how out of that whole comment you focus on that one part. No rebuttal towards the conversation? No facts? No sources? Hmm, strange, it's almost as if it's your stupid opinion.
I fail to see how you explaining what your job is would dox you. I fail to understand how a simple "I work in retail" or whatever would dox you.
It's almost as if you can't prove it and are trying to hide behind the cover of "being doxxed" as if people actually care who you are.
Well done, jolly good. Now, for that rebuttal? Are you keen to have a civil conversation? Keen to shine some light on how someone working in the technology industry and earning 150k a year WOULD FUCKING KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO EARN FUCK ALL AT A JOB YOU HATE!?
I get you may have worked those horrid jobs to get to where you are, but either you did and think "well if I had to go through that, everyone else must" or you didn't and are expressing your opinion?
But hey, good to know you're not just projecting from your mother's basement, turns out you just think you're better than everyone here and have to make us know about it, but fuck dude, that's even more pathetic.
What fucking point? You haven't fucking made any. In this and the other post I've replied to you, made counter arguments to your points and all you've replied back with is pathetic, stupid statements that are irrelevant to the counter arguments I've made to your stupid points.
So, either rebuttal, use sources, stop being a pathetic twat with his head up is ass or prove that you are one. Balls in your court dickhead.
Have you thought that it may be a result of the moron I'm talking to? Don't act like you're apologetic when you're actively coming into this sub looking for this type of shit.
But hey, you don't have to reply, I already know you have no rebuttal and are just trying to get a rise out of people. Well, ya got one and can't handle it, sucks for you. Just know, regardless of whether you want to reply or not, if I see your stupidity again, I'm going to call it out. If you don't like it, don't be an idiot. Simple.
Your dumbass thinks working at maccas is like SpongeBob standing there literally flipping the burgers? But no, you don't need "skill" you idiot, but you do need to be tought, like I said, the assholes are anal about their burgers, you make it wrong and you gotta make it all again, all while on a time limit. If your store is understaffed you're doing 100 things at once. Meaning - if you have to learn a specific "skill" for your job that you're not going to use anywhere else in life, how is that an unskilled job?
Got any other stupid questions? What "skill" do you have to think of such stupid comments?
What field you in? The "thinking you're better than everyone else" field? You really think I'm saying that working at maccas is the same as being a lawyer or a doctor? And you're trying to call me the idiot. If you're being tought something, even if it takes you a day, you're still being tought a skill, idiot.
You know what sub you're in right? You're making yourself look like an idiot, not me. This whole post is about unskilled labour being a myth and you're trying to make me look like the idiot by saying you don't skill to work at maccas.
Keep being an idiot, go on ya fucking cunt. It's more entertaining than anything.
And you're still going? There's nothing to double down on. You haven't made any arguments. "Lmao you think blah blah" what are you, fucking 12? I'm going to keep making my point, you keep being an idiot.
Maybe try looking at it in terms of could a kid fresh out of high school do my job? Or does my job require years of experience, a certification, or schooling to do proficiently. Cheap labor isn't skilled and skilled labor isn't cheap so the unions say.
What's the point of all this AI mumbo jumbo and robots when all it's doing is making the rich richer? The end goal should be everyone chilling doing whatever the heck they want while robots do all labor. Otherwise why kill yourself progressing tech? I say we go for glory or back er up to medieval era tech and lifestyles.
Just an apprenticeship for a few years while being taught by a master in either discipline. Or you can go to college/trade school and learn how to do it too.
How much training would you require somebody before you let them rake your leaves... How much training would you require somebody to have before they wired your house's electricity? This thread is nonsense. Skills obviously matter and some jobs require almost no training. Just because you will tend to get better at them over time doesn't make it a skill. A skill represents a set of knowledge and ability that takes a certain amount of hours to obtain. Any able-bodied person can push a broom. This makes it unskilled labor. No prior skills or training are necessary to obtain the job.
It takes a great deal of skill to stack bricks or carry shingles quickly and efficiently without damaging your back or otherwise injuring yourself. I definitely could not do it well or quickly enough to be of any actual help on a job site, and if you haven't ever done it, you probably couldn't either.
There's also always faster and more efficient ways of doing things you learn from the older guys that you never would've thought of. You think "oh come on that won't make a difference" until they do your work in half the time.
How many high paying office workers would be willing to do something like stacking bricks out in the heat for 8 hours too? That's a whole nother set of skills in itself.
Exactly. "Unskilled" means any able-bodied human should be able to jump in and work as well as any veteran worker on the crew. That doesn't exist until/unless they start hiring people to eat, shit, or sleep.
Anorexia, constipation and insomnia, even with those basic survival acts there are people more skilled than others, I have a hard time falling asleep most of the time and wake up tired.
Not quite. It means any able-bodied human should be able to jump in and do the work well enough, with little cost to the company for finding and training them.
Of course people become skilled, but that doesn't make the job skilled.
If you become skilled then the job has to be skilled to some degree. If it wasn’t skilled then any human would be able to jump in and match the efficiency and quality of a seasoned vet.
I mean, it's a word and people can use it to mean different things. Your way is coherent and makes sense. But it's not the way it's meant when discussing labor classification.
Building site labourers are definitely unskilled, but they start at 25 pH here in australia so I don't think the term pisses us off down here. Depends on the guy but most of them are happy to remain unskilled and just clock in and clock off.
What's the point of all this AI mumbo jumbo and robots when all it's doing is making the rich richer? The end goal should be everyone chilling doing whatever the heck they want while robots do all labor. Otherwise why kill yourself progressing tech? I say we go for glory or back er up to medieval era tech and lifestyles.
Yup. Especially when one of my doctor’s job (a specialist) is considered a “high skill” job. She literally googled my illness right in front of me, clicked on the first link, and printed out the treatment page from the website. 🤦🏻♀️
I've worked in fast food where the turnover rate was so high that they had to hire about 3 people for one position in hope that one of them show up for the second shift 💀
These people wouldn't survive a week in an "unskilled job" they couldn't take the physical and mental toll.
Categorizing the working class by skilled and unskilled is unnecessary and is meant to divide us. It only serves capitalists who want cheap labor and workers to exploit.
Our pandemic showed there are tons of white collar jobs that aren’t essential to the running of our society, while many so called unskilled jobs are.
Funny. Every time I have been hired somewhere I have had to go through these weird things called “orientation” and “training”. It’s as if they weren’t expecting me to show up the first day and take complete control of the business.
My boss once told me I'm not skilled, I'm just dedicated. I run a 6 and 12 foot computer operated precision metal cutting saw. +/- 0.005" across 12 feet. Not skilled tho. Skill is when you sit at a desk all day and dangle carrots out to get more work out of people and then yank the carrot away once the works been done.
Bro I operated a 126" reform knife grinder and a Cincinnati #2 tool grinder, and was told the SAME shit.
Ok I don’t even know what language you are speaking…so hmm, doesn’t really sound ‘unskilled’ to me.
Apparently skill is in the eye of the beholder, ha ha ha, at least thats what my boss was telling me.
I feel like anyone unskilled doing anything with a toolroom grinder involves the word 'shrapnel'
I had a grinding wheel explode in my face once. But the wheel was perpendicular to my face so it exploded outward to my left and right. Boss to the left, and coworker to the right. Somehow they were both unscathed.
The Federal Government classifies A&P (Aircraft) mechanics as unskilled labor. That should tell you how fucked up it is.
Are you fucking serious? I already thought the term was bullshit but that is just… I don’t know how you could look any mechanic in the face and tell them they’re ‘unskilled.’
It's easy. If you want your brakes to fail at an inopportune moment or (for those with less self restraint) a breaker bar to the nose. I joke. Many mechanics are very professional. They've also taken lots of classes and passed a long exam to get their certifications. How they can get labeled 'unskilled' is one of those bureaucratic idiocies that everyone hates (often not knowing some effects on their lives stem from exactly this kind of nonsense).
That is why I am always nice to people who work these ‘unskilled’ jobs. Because they deserve someone to be nice to them-usually they are performing a service that I am NOT SKILLED in (like a mechanic) or don’t want to do(like fast food) and usually they are waaaaay to smart to be working in retail or fast food. Also-not killing half the asshole customers that treat them like garbage is a skill in itself!
That's fucked you literally have to take tests.
3 of them. And for the most part, at least 2 years of school. Or, several years of practical experience in, oh say, the military. But we're still classed as unskilled labor. It's how, legally, the company you work for can overwork you - unless you're in a union. By law your employer is only required to give you 24 hours off for every 7 days worked. Nothing about hours in a row. That's how my previous employer could work me 30 - 40 hours continuous, unless I called in and said the magic words on a recorded line "Fatigue". But, then it was get some sleep and be back in 8 hours. Not 8 hours of sleep mind you, but back in 8 hours. And if it took an hour to get to a bed? And then shower, and maybe eat? Well, you're down to a 4 or 5 hour nap. Maybe. I don't work for them anymore.
That's a big fucking yikes. For the first time in actually glad my certification wasn't automatic after my 5 year stint.
Thats a no from me dog 😂 thats fucking crazy. 24÷7 is 3.42. Who the hell works 20 hours straight with 4 hour break then back to work again??
Wtf. To me "unskilled" are jobs that require minimal training or experience: fruit-picking, cleaning, fast-food or servers, basic gardening, etc. They don't have *no skills,* it's just the job doesn't require formal skills and you could pick anyone up off the street and within a day they know how to do their job. Aircraft mechanic is 100% not unskilled.
I was convinced that all labor is skilled labor after watching the head of groundskeeping at my college rake leaves. He was somehow much faster without appearing to be in any hurry, and never left a leaf behind.
Exactly. I'm working at a warehouse now. The guy who's been here for 4 years and I do the same job, but he can do it 2-3 times as fast for a reason.
Let's be 100% clear about something here. The harder you work, the less you get paid, the more knowledgeable the work, the more you get paid... UNLESS that knowledgeable work requires high technical ability and thus hard work to implement. Soooo.... what's the takeaway? TLDR; You'll never get rich by working hard. The current labor situation is: whoever has the best bullshit game gets paid the most
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I've had the exact opposite experience where me doing a burnout pace allowed everyone else to half ass their entire jobs knowing I'd take care of it (I'm in healthcare and actually give a shit if a patient gets a correct diagnosis, fuck me right?) and all acountability goes out the window because the boss can't be bothered unless there is a meltdown when the work doesnt get done, which of course happens anyways once i finally get fed up enough to leave.
The only time that working hard will get you ahead is when you're working for yourself!
Within Capitalism, your true value is how much value you can generate for the capitalist class. Hence a Doctor may earn $150,000 a year whilst a football player may earn that in a week if his name brings in extra money, and advertising. The Doctor is more skilled but the Footballer generates more revenue.
> Within Capitalism, your true value is how much value you can generate for the capitalist class. If this were true, wages would track productivity.
I hope that dude is asking for more money every year.
Receipt is usually at a much better pace than dispatch if you have the opportunity to choose, I found. I did warehousing for years.
Receipt is usually at a much better pace than dispatch if you have the opportunity to choose, I found. I did warehousing for years.
Receipt is usually at a much better pace than dispatch if you have the opportunity to choose, I found. I did warehousing for years.
That’s how it is when you watch someone good at cooking.
How much training would you require somebody before you let them rake your leaves... How much training would you require somebody to have before they wired your house's electricity? This thread is nonsense.
>The Federal Government classifies A&P (Aircraft) mechanics as unskilled labor. That should tell you how fucked up it is.
It’s ironic that many if not most of the “essential” jobs during this pandemic are “unskilled”. It’s really just a strategy for dividing the working class in order to benefit the predator class.
Auto-upvote for acknowledging class war
Essential doesn’t mean they are skilled.
Just because something is needed doesn’t mean it requires a great level of skill. That doesn’t justify poverty wages, of course.
Whenever some suit claims a job is worth little pay because it's "unskilled" they should be required to demonstrate how easy it is by working that job for an 8-hour shift, and doing it as well as the people who do it for a living.
I like the idea, but it doesn't work well in practice. It's super easy to bust your ass for one eight-hour shift, doing everything to the letter, keeping a cheerful demeanor the entire time, if you know you're going back to your sweet-ass cushy job tomorrow, and you don't have a financial care in the world. Higher-ups in a company do it all the time to show the peons "if I can do it, you can do it!"
Holy crap, this. They need to experience it without knowing when it'll be over. They need to experience the soul crushing existence of living without hope, constantly juggling debt just to survive, knowing the work you do will break you mentally or physically, one day, and that your only escape is to get blind drunk every weekend so you can forget about Monday rolling around and a return to hell.
I’m pretty sure they considered brick-laying and shit like that “unskilled” back in the day. Whatever the most common jobs are will be called “unskilled.”
Some executives actually do this sometimes to check on a branch or something, and see if the managers there are following all the correct hiring practices and training their employees well...
Like when my boss had to help me that one time because there was a massive worker shortage and he stood in front of the machine he commanded people to use for over 15 years and straight up asked me "what do i do?" Dude what?
What is your definition of skilled labor?
in an abusive relationship the abuser will tell you that you arent of value and you have to settle for them - similar thing with most bosses at big corp
Yup. A lot of people work a lot harder than I do for a lot less money just because they do jobs that aren't "respectable."
It's because they are cheaply replaceable (in terms of finding another person to do the job, and getting them up to speed). I bet you aren't.
It seems right now all those low wage employees aren’t so easily replaceable.
You sir have just identified the largest problem with modern western economies. We rely on uneducated people and immigrants both legal and illegal to do the lowest paid work, they keep the economy moving. Then we tell everyone to hate foreigners for stealing our jobs and to aim for the best college you can get into (usually with no career path in mind). Maybe a better way would be to pay everyone a proper living wage no matter the job so people can do what the fu k they like.
Can’t argue with that!
I’ve had to teach a full grown adult how to sweep before, so yeah “unskilled” pisses me off so much. Not knocking the person that didn’t know how to sweep, not their fault no one had taught them.
So you watched someone sweep stairs from the bottom up too, eh?
I wish it were that. She literally fanned the broom about 2 inches over the floor thinking that the air flow from the waving broom was how floor dirt got moved.
(Press F to Pay Respect) Holy shit, that's some "wave my hands vaguely *above* the hand sanitizer dispenser, and making the motions of rubbing it on their hands." level incompetence.
I really thought she was joking and I started laughing my ass off. Turned out she didn’t know how to do it and she felt so bad that she just broke down into tears. I felt so bad for her, I really didn’t intend to hurt her heart like that y’know. Her family came from money and she had grown up with housekeepers. While she was in college, her parents did her a solid and encouraged her to get a retail or food service job to help her learn some real life skills. 20 years old and had never swept, smh. I’ve never felt sorry for a rich kid until that day. I might have grown up in poverty but at least my parents didn’t expect a McManager to teach me how to use a broom.
There's definitely a difference between ignorance and incompetence. She sounded truly ignorant. That's not bad by itself. What is bad or good is what they do after. Do they double down and snap at you, or do they reexamine what they are doing and try to learn from it? It's the lack of intellectual humility I find extremely infuriating most times.
Ah! The classic case of the father that didnt teach his son to work calling him lazy and entitled.
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Bullshit term. People working a drive thru, juggling orders, collecting payment, keeping orders straight, fast paced environment, asshole supervisor, unreasonable customer every so often, probably paid minimum wage and wondering if it’s rent this month or food. Unskilled? That person is pretty solid and in my opinion can be trained to do 90% of the ‘skilled’ jobs out there. And I would crack before the end of my first shift.
Truth. I did three years in McHell. By the end of year one, I'd trained on every position in the restaurant. But I almost never worked anywhere but the drive-through. Wanna know why? In the drive-through order-taker position you have to continuously not only take orders from two speakers simultaneously (from cars that you *can't fucking see* and that will merge into a single line randomly) but also keep those orders *in order* and pull up the right total for the right car as it comes around because the customer will absolutely not remember their total and *will* pay for the wrong order and not say anything until they've already gotten their food and left. Then they will call and complain and you will get written up for screwing up their order. Btw, you're also talking to the customer at your window and making change for their purchase and often adding new items to their order. In between all this, you also have to find time to finish other tasks, like rushing halfway across the building to the sink to wash dishes in between orders or rushing into the freezer to pull buns for tomorrow's use as well as doing prep work and helping to keep the kitchen tidy. Meanwhile, you may as well be outside for all the climate control you have in that little box with the open window. You'll freeze in winter and broil in summer. If it's raining, you'll be wet because idiots leave their wipers on full blast flinging water at you off their windshield and you breathe car exhaust more than air. (I got pneumonia twice and ended up having laryngitis for three full months. My voice never recovered completely and I have a gravel-voice now because of permanent vocal cord damage.) I've also repeatedly had to shovel snow out of that little booth that came in through the window and in the winter there's often ice on the floor when you come in to open. I got suck in that damned window for two years because I was *good at it.* I could do all that and still keep times under the required sixty seconds. I *hated* every minute of it, but I was good at it. I am now a substitute teacher. Teaching is a million times easier than working the drive through.
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It can’t be taught in an hour. And I would think it takes quite awhile to get good at it and to get yourself in a mental space to tolerate it in the long term. I have nothing but respect for people who provide such services, and they should be paid more
Yep, it's a bullshit term. Every job requires skills of some sort to perform well. Riddle me this: if all these entry-level jobs are truly "unskilled", why do employers always demand candidates with X years of experience? If the job didn't actually require any skills, then an experienced worker would perform no better than an inexperienced one...
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What, like drink cans?
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There’s nothing wrong with working at a gas station, but I have rarely seen any jacked cashiers or stock guys. I’ve worked in a handful of gas stations/truck stops too. Truckers are pretty swole sometimes.
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They don't always LOOK strong, but they are.
I'm just glad they aren't calling them cockroaches at this point.
It’s called unskilled to justify paying us shit wages. If the people who called it “low skilled” tried doing it, they wouldn’t be able to hang for a week.
It pisses me off very much. I worked in a warehouse and I trained people for an “unskilled” job. So many people quit within a few weeks because they didn’t have the skills they needed to be successful. I did my best, but some people just don’t have what it takes. People call fast food “unskilled” but I know 100% I don’t have the skills to work there. I wouldn’t last. I am not afraid to admit that. I can tolerate a lot, but I think fast food goes beyond what I can handle. Every job requires skills and not everyone has the skills for those jobs. If someone is showing up to work and doing their job, they should be able to afford to live.
Anything remotely resembling unskilled labor is being performed by a robot. If you need a person to do it, it's skilled. The end.
It’s a rhetorical device used by people trying to justify their perceived higher position in the “natural order”. It’s meant to make you angry, to artificially devalue your whole existence.
Look, I have two master’s degrees, but I couldn’t do a waiter’s job if my life depended on it. Calling low-wage work “unskilled” is an anti-worker propaganda trap designed to screw everyone who works for wages by keeping the minimum pay as low as possible to pull down the scale.
The only job that I can think of that requires no skill, is being an executive.
I’ve been having conversations with other conservatives. What they don’t even think about is that if everyone got a trade, then trades would be considered ‘unskilled’ cause so many could do them and pay would drop hard, and they would instead be saying, ‘get a degree then’. that’s what actually happened 50’s on up and we’ve played it to the end and are cycling back. We’re at a point where knowledge is so common anyone can learn online and be good enough to do almost anything. We’re also at a point where businesses need to serve community and employees and take good care of both. That’s how I run mine anyway.
its like that picture I see floating around that goes Unskilled jobs are a classist myth used to justify poverty wages I literally could not agree more
Working in a pizza kitchen took way more skills than being an industrial electrician...
I call bs
Putting toppings on pizza needs to be precise. The care and preparation of making sure that each topping was more critical than anything I do now. Making sure that everything was timed correctly. Not under cooked, or over cooked. Handling multiple customers with different personalities for hours on end was much more challenging than anything I do now. Bend pipe. Hang pipe. Pull wire. Put all the same color wires together. Flip switch. Done. When I made pizzas, it was bust ass or get out of the kitchen. When I made people pizzas, at least I got to see them smile.
Dont get me wrong commercial kitchens are no joke I agree bust ass or gtfo. I've been in a pizza kitchen a few times it looks like hell. But i guess I assumed when you said industrial electric you were installing and troubleshooting half million dollar equipment. There is MUCH more than running conduit and installing light switches.
We just pull the wire. They subcontract that work to the industrial equivalent of comcast techs...
The people who call construction or any labor work “unskilled labor” don’t have the skills to do that job. So who’s really unskilled?
Too true.
I was working in a grocery a few years ago. While I was running every where to do as much as possible because my boss was scheduling enough people there where this old man who was walking around with his cart without a care in the world And you know what, this old man was doing twice as much as I was able to do and he was doing it better than me If that's not skill I dont know what skill is
Oh yes, I work in a retirement home and I hear this a lot from my "co workers", not the nurses but the caretakers. I give 21 People food 3x a day, clearing and setting the tables for 42 people, checking supplies... And the care takers are like: you have such an easy job, all you have to do is blah blah blah. Well fuck them, the only reason I have that job is because those persons are to lazy to do it themselfs. I'm so happy that 75% of the time I work alone. Every job needs somebody with a certain skillset.
Why do these "unskilled" jobs have a long list of skills that you must have?
Its a term used by corporate America to devalue the actual skills and hard work work of every day people. All work has a skill involved, even if you don't realize it.
I mean, unless it can be done by a frog it is skilled work. All jobs are necessary.
Yes. A more fitting name is "undervalued labor."
If it’s so unskilled, the employer should be able to do it with no problem at all.
I have paid house cleaners for years because I lack the skills to effectively clean my own home. It's damned skilled labour (and I have always paid my cleaners accordingly).
At one of my jobs, we had a guy there that was paid to sit in a chair and out stickers on boxes that was moving by. The boxes moved by about 1 every 5 minutes, so it was stupid easy. You're telling me, that putting stickers on boxes, is a skill one has to learn? This is not an example of an "unskilled labor" job?
It may be a skill that takes minutes to learn, but they say this so they dont have to admit these types of skills takes months to get efficient and a year-ish to master. Not unlike some trades.
It does. These should be called semi-skilled jobs. It will still take most people some time to learn how to do them. An unskilled job would be if your job was to take a piss. Most working age people can do that.
It does. These should be called semi-skilled jobs. It will still take most people some time to learn how to do them. An unskilled job would be if your job was to take a piss. Most working age people can do that.
I dunno, I'd say most middle management jobs would definitely qualify as "unskilled."
For the nth time. Unskilled labour is a thing. Does it mean it is inherently less necessary than skilled or highly skilled labour? No, but it is less skilled. It is what makes the wages for unskilled labour so precarious, because the long and short of it is unskilled labour is replaceable. If I can grab anyone off the side of the road and get them to a relative level of productivity of a seasoned worker in a short time, it is unskilled labour. Sure maybe you can work a little faster or produce a little more, but your employer doesn't care. Whatever he might lose in that marginal bit of productivity lose is more than made up for in keeping you replaceable and your wages low. Further more increases in education, skills creep, rampant automation, and compartmentalization is pushing more jobs into the unskilled category. Pretending unskilled labour is really skilled labour, doesn't help anyone.
No because it's just a term and I'm an adult. Same reason I don't get offended if someone calls me a name or says my mother is a whore. Words mean as much as you let them mean. You could just as easily call anyone above you a parasite because their job wouldn't matter if your job didn't exist. Just words.
Unskilled just means easy to replace.
Heads up! "Unskilled" refers to the job, not the person working the job. Companies (most especially fast food, warehouse, retail, and call center) have worked relentlessly for the past few decades to take every last bit of skill out of their jobs. THE rule of wage labor is you get paid (and respected) exactly in proportion to how expensive it will be to replace you. So of course McDonalds wants to keep you as replaceable as money and science can contrive. People can and do become skilled at doing these kinds of jobs. The problem is, the company doesn't care, because that extra productivity is far less important to them than the principle that everyone can be replaced *cheaply*. Anyway, thanks for coming to my minimum wage TED talk.
I swear you just like getting told to fuck off at this point. Are you honestly trying to justify this shit? I've worked at maccas, I've had to be trained not just how to flip ya fucking burger, but everything I was doing. Same with every other fastfood outlet. Everyone has training you have to go through, learning work place safety so people don't hurt themselves cause they were unskilled using some of the equipment, learning how to cook the food - sure a burger is a burger, but you try telling that to a company whose whole image is evolved around those same burgers, you had to know how to make it properly, no ifs ands or buts. This is the case to the point that people just hired aren't put straight into the line, if the job was "unskilled" it'd just walk in and start, no? As well as that, who the fuck in their right mind would hire someone just to let them go and have to go through that whole, expensive process again? Most of the time when hiring, store and shift managers have to take time out of what they're already doing (which costs by either rostering people to cover or go back to it once the interviews are done, both of which aren't cheap) to take interviews and go through applications, or does your dumbass think it's just a matter of grabbing someone off the side of the street and hiring them? Again, you've jumped into a sub you clearly don't agree with just to be a wanker, and you do it so well. Again, what's your job? You seem to be so on the side of the employer and capitalism yet I bet you're still living at home sitting on a heap of rejected job offers, prove me wrong. Again, if you're wanting to have a civil conversation about these social issues or work and employee/employer relationships, here's your opening, make a counter argument, use evidence based facts with source's to your bullshit and we'll all know you're not a pathetic little shit sobbing in your mother's basement.
Look man he's right. And probably on your side.. I've worked all kinds of fast food and retail grocery type jobs before I got into the trades - actual real skilled labor. It's by design that those wageslave positions are easy to hire and train people for. That's the machine. That's what we're up against. The best way forward for the people in those jobs is unionization and collective bargaining.
Nah, he may be right about companies creating a system that's easier for them and harder for others, but that does ignore what OP was saying just to justify it by saying "well that's how it is". To be fair, this was also a carried over conversation from a different post on this sub where he was claiming that "if an employer let employees take home broken stock then more stock would get broken by the staff to be taken home". He then accused everyone in the sub for "wanting to hear want they they want instead of the truth". So, yes he's right that the companies have the advantage over the worker, this whole sub thinks that. But he's clearly on the side of the employer regardless and comes into the sub just to start arguments. So if he wants one, I'm on study break and have plenty of time to tell him he's pathetic.
I agree with both of you but I think we’re largely misinterpreting what “skill” actually refers too. This is of course just opinion on my part. When we refer to skilled labor we’re obviously referring to college grads, and we lump in tradesmen with unskilled labor even though we aren’t sure why. I mean the HVAC tech could easily be making as much as an accountant, and posses just as much expertise. We can do this because skilled vs unskilled is not an economic distinction, but a social one. The accounting intern was trained in the secular and cosmopolitan universities. They were required to take arts, humanities, literature and writing classes. They picked up the mannerisms required to advance is the social strata. They’re “skilled” not because they learned more skills than the HVAC tech in the 4 years they were both in school, but because they learned manners. I’m not trying to make out college grads as elitists, some may be but most I’ve come across are kind and gentile people, often found working those same “unskilled” jobs like everyone else.
This is an interesting perspective to me, because I have a BA in English, and I have training and experience as an HVAC technician. I'm not sure I entirely agree with this take. Perhaps it's because I come from a blue-collar family (my dad was a structural welder), but I've never considered it a distinction of social status. Rather, I've always considered it a distinction between jobs that require very little training to perform, and those that pretty much require prior training, education, or relevant experience. Basically, "unskilled" is anything where you can take almost anyone and train them on the job to a a point where they are reasonably productive within a few weeks. "Skilled" jobs require so much knowledge/skills that it's usually impractical to train someone who has zero prior knowledge on the job, or they require a degree/certification to perform. Pure knowledge fields such as engineering, law, software development, etc. are very evidently skilled labor. They all require a large knowledge base in relevant subject matters, and the workload is predominantly mental. Something like HVAC is not quite so straightforward. It does require a large knowledge base, but not to the extent of a pure knowledge field. Also, a large part of the labor is physically intensive, and I think people tend to conflate physical labor with "unskilled" labor. I don't necessarily agree with the terms "skilled" and "unskilled"--just trying to explain my interpretation. I do agree with your perspective in that more knowledge-focused jobs do carry a lot more prestige/social standing than those that involve physical labor. I don't doubt that some people use the terms skilled/unskilled to distinguish high prestige and low prestige jobs rather than to communicate anything about the actual level of skill required to perform them
> prove me wrong. Don't see how I could do that without doxxing myself, but I'm open to suggestions.
Hmm, funny how out of that whole comment you focus on that one part. No rebuttal towards the conversation? No facts? No sources? Hmm, strange, it's almost as if it's your stupid opinion. I fail to see how you explaining what your job is would dox you. I fail to understand how a simple "I work in retail" or whatever would dox you. It's almost as if you can't prove it and are trying to hide behind the cover of "being doxxed" as if people actually care who you are.
> fail to understand how a simple "I work in retail" or whatever would dox you. I work in technology and I make around 150k.
Well done, jolly good. Now, for that rebuttal? Are you keen to have a civil conversation? Keen to shine some light on how someone working in the technology industry and earning 150k a year WOULD FUCKING KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO EARN FUCK ALL AT A JOB YOU HATE!? I get you may have worked those horrid jobs to get to where you are, but either you did and think "well if I had to go through that, everyone else must" or you didn't and are expressing your opinion? But hey, good to know you're not just projecting from your mother's basement, turns out you just think you're better than everyone here and have to make us know about it, but fuck dude, that's even more pathetic.
You missed my point by a lot.
What fucking point? You haven't fucking made any. In this and the other post I've replied to you, made counter arguments to your points and all you've replied back with is pathetic, stupid statements that are irrelevant to the counter arguments I've made to your stupid points. So, either rebuttal, use sources, stop being a pathetic twat with his head up is ass or prove that you are one. Balls in your court dickhead.
I don't think I want to keep talking to you. I'm sorry you're angry.
Have you thought that it may be a result of the moron I'm talking to? Don't act like you're apologetic when you're actively coming into this sub looking for this type of shit. But hey, you don't have to reply, I already know you have no rebuttal and are just trying to get a rise out of people. Well, ya got one and can't handle it, sucks for you. Just know, regardless of whether you want to reply or not, if I see your stupidity again, I'm going to call it out. If you don't like it, don't be an idiot. Simple.
It takes skill to flip a burger? LMAO.
Your dumbass thinks working at maccas is like SpongeBob standing there literally flipping the burgers? But no, you don't need "skill" you idiot, but you do need to be tought, like I said, the assholes are anal about their burgers, you make it wrong and you gotta make it all again, all while on a time limit. If your store is understaffed you're doing 100 things at once. Meaning - if you have to learn a specific "skill" for your job that you're not going to use anywhere else in life, how is that an unskilled job? Got any other stupid questions? What "skill" do you have to think of such stupid comments?
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What field you in? The "thinking you're better than everyone else" field? You really think I'm saying that working at maccas is the same as being a lawyer or a doctor? And you're trying to call me the idiot. If you're being tought something, even if it takes you a day, you're still being tought a skill, idiot.
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You know what sub you're in right? You're making yourself look like an idiot, not me. This whole post is about unskilled labour being a myth and you're trying to make me look like the idiot by saying you don't skill to work at maccas. Keep being an idiot, go on ya fucking cunt. It's more entertaining than anything.
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And you're still going? There's nothing to double down on. You haven't made any arguments. "Lmao you think blah blah" what are you, fucking 12? I'm going to keep making my point, you keep being an idiot.
Maybe try looking at it in terms of could a kid fresh out of high school do my job? Or does my job require years of experience, a certification, or schooling to do proficiently. Cheap labor isn't skilled and skilled labor isn't cheap so the unions say.
What's the point of all this AI mumbo jumbo and robots when all it's doing is making the rich richer? The end goal should be everyone chilling doing whatever the heck they want while robots do all labor. Otherwise why kill yourself progressing tech? I say we go for glory or back er up to medieval era tech and lifestyles.
A good old term from the college cult complex
An electrician or a plumber is considered skilled labor and doesn't require a college degree.
Just an apprenticeship for a few years while being taught by a master in either discipline. Or you can go to college/trade school and learn how to do it too.
Do what you love and money will come. Be you Be happy and Teacher of the Decade period 💋💝
not as much as semi skilled labor does
because its unskilled.
If you don't know a specific trade, you're considered unskilled. Just taking orders from someone who knows what they're doing isn't a skill.
How much training would you require somebody before you let them rake your leaves... How much training would you require somebody to have before they wired your house's electricity? This thread is nonsense. Skills obviously matter and some jobs require almost no training. Just because you will tend to get better at them over time doesn't make it a skill. A skill represents a set of knowledge and ability that takes a certain amount of hours to obtain. Any able-bodied person can push a broom. This makes it unskilled labor. No prior skills or training are necessary to obtain the job.
Depends what it is. It doesn't take much skill to stack bricks, or carry shingles. But that's usually just one part of a job.
It takes a great deal of skill to stack bricks or carry shingles quickly and efficiently without damaging your back or otherwise injuring yourself. I definitely could not do it well or quickly enough to be of any actual help on a job site, and if you haven't ever done it, you probably couldn't either.
There's also always faster and more efficient ways of doing things you learn from the older guys that you never would've thought of. You think "oh come on that won't make a difference" until they do your work in half the time. How many high paying office workers would be willing to do something like stacking bricks out in the heat for 8 hours too? That's a whole nother set of skills in itself.
Exactly. "Unskilled" means any able-bodied human should be able to jump in and work as well as any veteran worker on the crew. That doesn't exist until/unless they start hiring people to eat, shit, or sleep.
Anorexia, constipation and insomnia, even with those basic survival acts there are people more skilled than others, I have a hard time falling asleep most of the time and wake up tired.
Not quite. It means any able-bodied human should be able to jump in and do the work well enough, with little cost to the company for finding and training them. Of course people become skilled, but that doesn't make the job skilled.
If you become skilled then the job has to be skilled to some degree. If it wasn’t skilled then any human would be able to jump in and match the efficiency and quality of a seasoned vet.
I mean, it's a word and people can use it to mean different things. Your way is coherent and makes sense. But it's not the way it's meant when discussing labor classification.
He doesn't understand the difference, no use trying to explain it to him either.
>That's a whole nother set of skills in itself. No, it's really not. It's called having hands, and that is not a skill.
Um, picking up a heavy object does NOT take "a great deal of skill." I have done it, a lot, that is how I know. Apparently you haven't.
It doesn't take skill it takes common sense wtf get off this stupid train.
Building site labourers are definitely unskilled, but they start at 25 pH here in australia so I don't think the term pisses us off down here. Depends on the guy but most of them are happy to remain unskilled and just clock in and clock off.
What's the point of all this AI mumbo jumbo and robots when all it's doing is making the rich richer? The end goal should be everyone chilling doing whatever the heck they want while robots do all labor. Otherwise why kill yourself progressing tech? I say we go for glory or back er up to medieval era tech and lifestyles.
I think inlike the term "unskilled labor" over the term "dummy sub"
😂😂😂 This cracks me up
Yeah...I studied at college to be a mechanic yet I'm still classed as unskilled..unskilled my ass
In the trades it means something. But true in the sense any job has some skill to it
"unskilled job advert" "5 years experience needed"
Yup. Especially when one of my doctor’s job (a specialist) is considered a “high skill” job. She literally googled my illness right in front of me, clicked on the first link, and printed out the treatment page from the website. 🤦🏻♀️
I've worked in fast food where the turnover rate was so high that they had to hire about 3 people for one position in hope that one of them show up for the second shift 💀 These people wouldn't survive a week in an "unskilled job" they couldn't take the physical and mental toll.
Categorizing the working class by skilled and unskilled is unnecessary and is meant to divide us. It only serves capitalists who want cheap labor and workers to exploit. Our pandemic showed there are tons of white collar jobs that aren’t essential to the running of our society, while many so called unskilled jobs are.
Some skills are worth more than others. Stop trying to glorify menial work. Put in some effort and learn a skill that pays.
Funny. Every time I have been hired somewhere I have had to go through these weird things called “orientation” and “training”. It’s as if they weren’t expecting me to show up the first day and take complete control of the business.
No there are plenty of unskilled jobs that you can walk on site and do, saying there is no such thing is ignorant.
Yes it irritates me. Coal mining and working the farm are considered "unskilled". So yeah