I’m confused, does he actually think a box packer is skilled labor or is this just a whoosh from the girl.
Warehouse fulfillment is skilled labor. Fast food work is skilled labor. I’m having a hard time thinking of an example of a truly unskilled labor job.
Skilled labor is economists jargon, so the meaning of it does not match the dictionary definition.
No one is saying there is literally no skill involved in unskilled labor.
Skilled labor = real human deserving of a fair wage.
Unskilled labor = meat machine that we need to pay by law, but we gladly wouldn’t pay them a dime if we could get away with it because they aren’t real people.
-Asshat Owners
Technically skilled as in requiring education (financed by the state), unskilled can learn on the job within days.
But politics has a way with twisting those words into a us/them dichotomy.
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I’m a software engineer. There’s people on my team that went to Yale for computer science. There’s also people on my team that took a six month coding boot camp. They’re both great at their jobs.
Specifics of software engieneering. Doesn’t work with civil engieneering, electrical engieneering and many other fields.
Some people just can’t be trained to write code. You still need the aptitude at the end of the day.
For me it’s not really an us/them opposition, my disgust is with how unskilled laborers are viewed/treated because of our lack of education. That somehow makes us subhuman and undeserving of a living wage. That we should be thankful for a minimum wage.
I have no issue with skilled laborers, I have an issue with owners/CEO/etc… us laborers of all skills are in the same boat. Best friend works for Intel, Intel makes tons of money, friend gets pay cut and added responsibility. ¿Que?
The problem lies in the fact that we need to categorise these subjects to write more effective policy. And it doesn’t matter what words you use, they always get these connotations as familiarity grows.
To add to this, the whole education level dictates importance thing never made sense to me anyways. I may see a doctor once or twice a year, but I need garbage collected every week. On the level of social importance it strike me then that the garbage person is therefor more important than a doctor.
I think its unintended but by that definition then carpentry or other trades which used to be learned by apprenticeship on the job aren’t skilled?
Education requires no skill, you just kiss professor’s ass and do as you’re told, your reward is a diploma. Here, is that reductionist enough for you?
By the way, cashier job can’t be learned within days, you need to be literate and know at least basic math and average kid goes to school for at least 8 years so fuck you. I can’t even think of a job that requires no education.
Some more sarcasm and condescension
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Is it made less difficult to achieve a living wage for everyone by affirming, or by challenging, the practice of characterizing some labor as “unskilled”?
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You seem to be inserting an appeal to purity, by characterizing certain skills as “special”.
Sure. To the economist the terms are jargon, but to the bootlicker they are sacred words. Your heresy is unwelcome.
Landlord
Close, but that’s not a job. It’s no coincidence that the destructive practice of using your wealth to suck wealth out of society without adding anything beneficial is called Rent-seeking
That requires no labour though.
Warehouse fulfillment and fast food. It takes little education and training. I can be doing it in a week. Tops.
It’s far harder and longer timeframe replacing an engineer for example.
That’s not skilled labor though, that’s white-collar office worker stuff.
A better example would be a lathe operator.
White collar has nothing to do with skilled or not. It’s a calculation on time and cost to replace.
I don’t know anything about lathe operators but it’s very clear that it’s harder to replace engineers vs cooking fast food.
probably the “labor” part
I don’t think the issue is with the term skilled, I think it’s with labor.
Unskilled labor is McDonald’s.
Skilled labor would be like a machinist or a plumber.
It takes a lot of training, maybe an apprenticeship, etc. maybe even vocational school.
You’re comparing the bottom person at a restaurant with a mid level engineer. You should be comparing an engineering intern with a dishwasher or something. Both are somewhat replaceable (but try running anything without them).
Compare an actual engineer with a restaurant manager or head chef. Both of those require experience and education.
An entry level engineer is going to have 2 years of additional math, or coding, or whatever after highschool. I was cooking burgers and running a register at 14. It’s easy to learn. Most people can cook a burger as a part of their existence, no training but the specific way they want. Far far more easy to replace and train.
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Walmart door greeter, maybe?
I think all jobs at least have the potential to be skilled labor. The issue is with many of these types of jobs the work isn’t paid well enough for someone to stick around and really develop the skills.
Obviously there are many exceptions as there are a lot of really skilled workers working jobs that still pay well below what they should but hopefully, with more awareness and union membership uptick, this is improving.
Yep most of the time they just stand there they just watch you walk by. To be fair lots of assholes on this side of town.
I guess one thing I learned reading this thread, there are very few unskilled jobs nowadays.
Maybe old time admin assistants just collating papers, making copies, etc but even then those are really just unskilled tasks moreso than an unskilled job. They also had appointments to set up, calendars and rolodexes to manage, organization, etc.
I think any unskilled job can be made skilled labour if you’re thoughtful about how you do it, and do it well.
Whatever job Eminem had in 8 Mile on the Up/Down button machine?
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You’re gonna tell me catching a stray cat, butchering it correctly and making mincemeat that tastes no different from cow to average customer doesn’t require copous amountso of knowledge?
Don’t get me started on making a dead rat look like a KFC chicken nugget.
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No it doesn’t. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kn9EpGqrOE
This one is just condescension. But the pattern is there
Skilled labor requires a degree, unskilled labor does not.
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I’d asume some of the jobs where you just test meds all day doesent require any skill
All skilled labor can be represented by the unskilled labor required to recreate it, ie training.
The only one I can think of is the guy that carries the nitroglycerin into the train tunnel when they’re digging it.
It’s so unskilled that if you mess up, you die and don’t even learn a lesson. The job is literally walk without splashing this liquid.
This job doesn’t exist anymore. Human rights and all, but a lot of train tunnels are coated in the blood of “unskilled labor”.
Skilled labor meaning it took more than a twenty minute introduction for the job. If the guy flipping burgers can cook multiple burgers at multiple Temps, than that would classify as skilled labor. They guy that drops the fries in the fryer and just has to wait for the ding, not skilled labor. Another example, a welder who knows how the mixture of gas affects the welds, skilled labor. It’s knowledge of why and how to get to the end result rather than following basic instructions just because that’s what you were told.
Fruit picker, maybe? I know it’s physically hard but is that skilled?
The skill is being able to endure hard labour
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Every single action can be mastered to perfection, then relearned from the basics. There’s endless depth to everything
Fruit picking can be grabbing, twisting/pulling, then putting a thing into a basket. You can do it faster and more precisely to use less energy, you can stack fruits so more fit without bruising, you can change how you walk and hold the basket to strain yourself less. You could relearn it so you toss it all in a basket still on your back, perfectly so they don’t bruise or bounce out of place. You could learn to identify how long until a fruit ripens and chart an optimal path day by day, or even learn to smell them out.
An “unskilled job” is a job where you can get someone up to basic competence quickly. It’s an effort to use people like a fungible unit of man-hours, and to make up the difference by essentially being strategically wasteful.
A better fruit picker will have more and better fruit in less time, a better fast food cook will make a better burger. By standardizing it, you can reduce the floor - you can throw out bruised, under ripe, or overripe fruits. Maybe you can even process the rejects make juice or fruit snacks from them… You can use machines to minimize the cost and chemicals to cover for inferior ingredients
But you also cap the ceiling. An amateur fruit picker or chef can make better food than McDonald’s or Dole, because capitalism doesn’t care about “better”, it incentivizes everything to be “good enough” and punishes quality control beyond that… It’s far more profitable to put more effort into marketing an inferior product than to produce something of higher quality.
And that’s why everything sucks - because it’s more profitable to lower standards than to produce better goods.
We worry about AI alignment with little reason, but we’re blind to the fact corporations are not aligned with human values
So to you what is the difference between a job that requires years of experience to become fully capable vs a job you can pick up and learn within a couple of minutes/hours/days?
You gonna pay your plumber the same as a fry cook?
A nuclear safety engineer as much as a cashier?
Cardiac Surgery M.D. the same as a box packer at an amazon distribution center?
Teacher the same as a universal basic income recipient?
Your fry order being wrong means nothing, the business owner pays for it to be replaced.
The cashier may scan an item twice or miss scanning an item but the nuclear safety engineer stopped that worker who was careless from dying due to radiation exposure.
The cardiac surgery M.D. gave your mom a new heart letting her live another 25 years but with a simple mistake instead she dies on the operating table and the insurance they pay for covers the inevitable malpractice lawsuit. The amazon box packer packs the wrong item so the recipient at worst asks for a replacement, and the business owner replaces the item if it’s a private seller or provides a refund - or amazon ships a brand new one at their expense.
The teacher helped you understand basic concepts of mathematics, geometry, physics, biological processes… the UBI recipient rents their flat in Strasbourg at no cost.
When your definition of skilled labor is basic cognition ability then apparently no labor requires advanced knowledge of concepts that are difficult to understand and the risk undertaken has no tangible value. It’s fine if the cardiac surgeon shows up drunk or high because the fry cook could without anyone losing their life, right? After all, their labor isn’t valuable- anybody can do it because it’s just skilled labor on par with packing boxes.
People are paid based on outcomes of their role and the amount of competition there is in that labor segment. Nurses right now, especially the ones that deal with the real messy cases are an excellent example of great pay and benefits due to a shortage of workers in markets where there is demand (e.g. population centers where nurses are needed.)
Software developers can make 250k++ - why isn’t everyone just doing that? it’s nearly free to learn (need internet and a basic computer) and building a portfolio just requires learning a skill and practicing it. You don’t even need to leave the house. Packing boxes is way harder on your body. Cooking fries or dealing with customers is way messier and no one wants to really do those gigs… so why not just dev? isn’t it an easy “skilled labor”?
That last paragraph is miles away from the truth. Developers are not coders and you need a lot of fundamental knowledge in things like math, logic, design, etc., a degree, very strong grasp of a lot of technical skills, and plenty of practical experience to be worth six figures, much less 250k. Well paid coders are quickly being replaced by either AI, offshore resources, or a combination of both and at the best of times they made half of what you suggested.
If you were able to grind your way into 250k with only a GED and skills you taught yourself off the Internet, consider yourself a unicorn and also an artifact of the past that is basically impossible to replicate now.
A buddy of mine just cracked six figures. He has a degree in development. His degree literally says “programmer analyst”.
Even after all that, he didn’t hit six figures until many years into his career.
programmer analyst
This is more of QA / testing than programming. What title did he start with, how many job changes and what is the current title?
I know TONS of people who went to school for CS but couldn’t cut it because they didn’t sit down and continue learning and building a portfolio to really be the shining star to land the job they wanted. If you count them the average cs major probably gets paid like 40k or some shit. It’s easy to not make it over the bar because you have ADHD, can’t keep enough things in your head, don’t have the work ethic etc.
Also i’m talking US salaries, not other nations. Not working for non profits, schools, startups etc that are low wages.
Yeah, no.
It’s a title solely meant to pay less for software engineers, and usually dedicated towards IT folk working with vended products.
I know this because I got a 30k bump when my org remapped people’s titles based on their work, and they really didn’t want to keep losing software engineers.
You misunderstand. That’s what his degree says.
He’s been a developer since starting his career. He has no intention of moving to QA.
He’s spent a lot of time between colleges and universities and holds several diplomas for programming, and even spent time teaching during his degree. He has deep knowledge of programming fundamentals, logic, even dabbled in AI and compiler design, making his own compiler at one point as a project for school.
He’s spent the better part of a decade acquiring the knowledge he has. He’s been a senior developer at several companies, and when he broke six figures, it wasn’t a raise he asked for, nor one he had to change jobs to get. He’s also not the type of person who changes jobs for a raise. He’s had four different employers over the past 5-10 years…
He’s a very smart person and very logical. I feel very privileged to be his friend since highschool.
Interesting. I would be happy to get to know y’all
What school offers a degree in “Programmer Analyst”?
Software developers can make 250k++
That’s what I said, it’s possible. It’s not everyone. It’s not show up first day after your coding bootcamp with 0 self study and 0 effort outside of an education program. It’s a few years of learning bleeding edge skills.
There have been machine learning roles paying over 150k for someone with 2 years of experience programming and “an interest in machine learning” all this year because of the AI craze. 150k is way beyond low income by all measures and is very realistic for the typical dev after 2-3 roles and fiveish years of experience. every year that goes by someone with practical experience designing and implementing ML projects in business is going to be worth their weight in gold, so long as businesses are willing to pay.
You don’t need a degree for dev. My brother doesn’t have one, he’s doing just fine. He took a boot camp but put WAY more effort in on his own time than a simple course. He did manual labor before the boot camp and made less than a third of what he is paid now. He’s looking at roles that pay well above 100k after less than two years of experience.
Saying that programming roles are being placed by AI or offshore labor is the biggest red flag that exposes that you do not know how things actually work in CS. I will say that going offshore is a thing many businesses decide to do but it bites them in the ass in this kind of position.
The claim was that different kinds of labor require different skills.
Do you have any substantive argument to the contrary?
You gonna pay your plumber the same as a fry cook?
Without first I don’t get water, without second I don’t get food. Yeah.
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I’m sorry you’re unable to do basic plumbing tasks though.
Says who?
You said you don’t get food without fry cooks
OK.
OK.
No, he thinks it’s more work. More work but he was paid slightly more until fast food workers got the bump.
Someone should tell him the harder you work the less people seem to make unless it’s something very specialized.
All Labor is Skilled Labor.
Ask Bezos to work in one of his own warehouses. Ask him to flip burgers. See how long he lasts before he is asked to leave.
Nah nah I agree my guy, but your getting caught up on the social definition. The guy who made the statement, legitimately thinks it takes significantly more skill to pack a box than to flip a burger. Like his definition of unskilled labor just unapologetically includes everyone below him, and all he does is pack fucking boxes. It’s GOTTA be satire.
One skill differs from another qualitatively.
None is higher or lower than another.
I think this is an example of how much the upper crust has done to divide the main ingredients.
Whooosh? I don’t know, but I know what I want to believe.
All labor is skilled labor.
Not when I’m doing it!
💀
I got the joke, but I definitely see why others may have missed it
Yes, but some labor, like McDonalds fry cooks, is also skillet labor.
Well then some labor, like working in certain music industries, is also Skrillex labor.
Mom said to bring home some chicken nuggets.
What kind of fucked up centaur is this?
It’s not a centaur, it’s a leftaur.
All jobs are equal but some jobs are more equal than others.
On a more serious note:
Of course all labor requires some level of basic human capability and as such must pay a living wage. But there is very much a distinction you can draw, based on the amount of training required to perform a job accurately and safely without supervision, and how much background knowledge is required to go above and beyond the daily work, e.g. to respond to emergencies or to further develop e is ting procedures.What is the reason for such a distinction being constructed and becoming entrenched?
Who determines such processes, and who benefits?
Because it’s a convenient way to talk about work. The collective of all who speak the language drives the process of word creation and definition and benefits from it.
The fact that companies pay workers too little is independent from this. I also don’t think that the word itself is “weaponized” so to speak.
For whom is it convenient to discuss work, in the way work is commonly discussed, in our society?
Language both expresses and determines constructs and values in the society using and evolving the language.
Does everyone contribute similarly to language? Is everyone affected similarly?
Guys desperate to put himself above another, with the delusion of throwing shit in a box being skilled labor, instead of standing in solidarity with the mcdonalds worker and demanding more for both of them
If he thinks packing boxes is skilled labor, then flipping burgers is also skilled labor.
It’s just not specialized, and doesn’t require any certification or further education. Which would command the premium he’s thinking of.
All labor is skilled labor. Can you think of any job that doesn’t require learning some sort of skill(s)? It’s just an arbitrary designation intended to justify low wages.
I’m highly educated but you couldn’t just stick me into a traditionally “unskilled” roles for which I have neither experience nor training and expect me to function. I’d crash and burn because jobs require the development and utilization of… wait for it…skills.
Some labor is inherently more skilled than other. I can train you in a day to flip burgers. You’ll be better in a month than you are on day one, but you don’t need hands on training after that first day.
I can’t train you in a month to operate a break press. And in my plant that’s the least skilled job.
I get that all jobs require some skill, I’m not disputing that. But when we’re talking about skilled labor, were talking about those jobs that require significant investment in time to learn, often requiring the laborer to seek that education on their own before even being considered for a job.
I’ve always assumed skilled labor referred to like, electricians and plumbers. Tradesmen kind of positions, the stuff you have to apprentice for. So if you’re a really good plumber or whatever, you can demand a premium on top of whatever your trade normally allows. Whereas this dude could be the best box packer in all of the Amazon warehouses and should never expect a cent more than any of his coworkers, because the job only takes like a week to train for.
Yup. Skilled labor is jobs that require real training. Unskilled labor is like, can be learned to a tolerable level in less than a week
While that’s true, it’s much easier to get someone with formal higher education to learn how to operate a cash register than to get someone without education to operate industrial equipment. In other words, we need more and better formal education for everyone.
In the past, the privileged would be mocked for their lack of capacities in practical activities.
These days, the myth of the meritocracy compels the unprivileged to identify with the values of those by whom they are devalued.
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More reasonably: failed to use /s
I don’t think dude knows what “skilled labor” means.
Seriously. It takes more skill to prepare food than to pack a box.
I think he’s referring to the standard Amazon packer assortment of skills: pissing in a bottle, hiding workplace injuries, sleeping in your car, etc.
You might upset him if you try to taint the good name of the company.
Packing boxes at Amazon is skilled labor?
All labor is skilled labor, but packing boxes sure as shit isn’t more skill than a short order cook.
I’ll do you one in reverse: all labor can be represented in the unskilled labor required to recreate it. If unskilled labor is x, and skilled labor is 2x, skilled is just a higher quantity of unskilled labor as expressed per hour.
I don’t think you are saying they are actually interchangeable in that way, but employers think like this and will hire multiple ‘unskilled’ people to do a job that would take one ‘skilled’ person. In reality the work done by unskilled people will not be the same as the skilled person.
Yes, skilled labor isn’t normally represented in multiple people selling unskilled labor, but rather the unskilled labor of training and whatnot.
No. Because that is assuming that all work has more primitive forms that are still extent. There really isn’t a market for unskilled heart surgery. Lots of work is binary, you can and should do it, or you can’t and should definitely not try.
The model you are advocating is a gross simplification that wouldn’t even be applicable to basic machine parts.
No, you’re grossly misinterpreting what I’m saying.
Heart Surgery is represented as the condensed unskilled labor of decades of experience before even being able to perform one. All of that training requires decades of hard training to replicate.
I’m not implying that you can get 40 dudes with no training to do heart surgery together.
How would that even work? Who is training the surgeon? Where does the unskilled labor go, does it hover about the person like a spirit?
Maybe humans are more complicated than “well since this guy has a CPR cert his labor is 1.2x the person without”.
I think the observation is that little or no broad difference emerges between training for providing skilled labor, versus simply providing labor that may be considered as unskilled. In either case, one provides labor, with or without the intention of developing skill, but certainly converging toward such an effect.
You’re still thinking of it in completely the wrong way. All skilled labor is, is unskilled labor for training, and current labor. Nobody gives a shit who trained who, or where it magically needs to hang.
Fine. Skills + labor = skilled labor.
Are you studying to be an economist or something?
Every skill is different from others qualitatively, not ranked hierarchically, one above or below another.
My skill is shitting in a corner, I’ve practiced and I’m very good at it, and I don’t want no electricity scientists saying they’re better than me goddammit.
Both are just following instructions. I just put a fry cook slightly higher because a mistake on their part could burn the building down. A box filler, not so much.
May I hold a box packer in higher regard, because of all the days I would lose from being shipped the wrong item, or would I be missing the concerns of broader relevance?
You clearly haven’t seen me at work.
I get what you’re saying, but calling any position a cook at McDonald’s is uhh…generous.
“food assembly position” is more like it
that’s most chain restaurant kitchens though…
2023, words mean anything you want them to mean and the only thing that is real is our outrage. That’s why a cardiologist is just as skilled as someone stacking boxes.
The meanings of terms are often determined and enforced socially through particular systems that carry power in society.
Don’t let that question distract you from how he illustrates her point: the capitalists get away with exploitation by distracting workers into fighting among ourselves. It’s so easy for them: even in this thread everyone sails right past this main point into arguing about whether an Amazon warehouse worker or a McDonald’s cook should earn more.
I would add, though, the deeper observation, that among the means of imposing division is the constructed distinction and terminology embodied by “unskilled labor”.
The concern for workers is not which worker belongs in which category, nor even which categories should be given and how they should be named, but rather, how to challenge both the distinction and also the processes and conditions from which it emerges.
So what’s the reason that I don’t have to work as an Amazon warehouse dude or McDonald’s cook? I’m not really a capitalist, 95% of my income comes from my work.
I don’t quite see the relevance of your question. People can do different jobs. We don’t need to fight with one another about them, when the real significant inequality is between what employees receive versus those who cream the value off the top.
Sure as hell is if the company needs it to happen
I think (choose to believe) the original tweet is satire.
Oh yeah, calling box packing skilled labor can’t not be satire.
we are in the post-poe era.
Satire is dead.
Reality is far more ridiculous than satire could have ever hoped to be.
TIL packing boxes is skilled labor
Everything is skilled labour. For 99% of jobs you couldn’t roll up and be proficient at it without training or practice.
But correct me if I am wrong, but in my country skilled labor means you have to have a relevant formal education to qualify for the job, (in addition to getting training on the job which is inevitable).
Phrasing means whatever the powerful groups who promulgate the phrasing establish that it should mean.
You are correct.
Yes, all jobs take skill. Unskilled jobs usually mean jobs that require no prior training or experience. They will train you and you will get experience there.
They’re jobs for, currently, unskilled workers. Or at least, workers that do not have a skill they can transfer over to the workforce.
Yeah, but not all jobs offer training on-site.
If you’re an unskilled worker, you’re only eligible for unskilled positions, i.e. ones that don’t require outside training.
If you can learn it without primary education, it’s not skilled labor.
If the means of completing a task must be learned, then the task requires skill.
Requiring skill doesn’t make it “skilled labour”, though. The phrase means more than “labour that requires something that meets the definition of skill”.
Who determines the definition, and toward what ends?
Investopedia has a definiton.. It seems to provide a breakdown of a lot of related terms.
I also would make the argument that not everything that needs to be learned should be described as “skilled”.
Saying the word “the” needs to be learned. I wouldn’t describe saying “the” as “skilled”.
What is your intention from “should”?
From your suggestion, whose interests are being protected, and whose harmed?
Why should anyone in particular dominate the process of establishing usages?
Not exactly, but close. Skilled labor is worth that unskilled labor such is required to replicate it. You don’t need primary school education to be strong as fuck and great at busting rocks, such labor is far more productive per hour than the average.
Came to say this. It’s hard labor, sure, but it’s probably the least skilled job there is.
Since when is packing boxes a skilled labor?
I think that’s the joke
Everything’s a skilled Labor job if you use your imagination hard enough.
It does get easier, though.
I rather a dude handling my food get paid better than someone touching cardboard.
No balls ony food is preferred over no balls on my Amazon packages.
But what if we could have both?
Think of the shareholders!
Extra cheese flavor all around!
Who wants to tell him?
That McDonald’s takes more skill than boxes?
Different kinds of labor take different skills, not more or less, better or worse.
Some skills do take more time to learn. And sometimes, the job is safety relevant, meaning that it could cause harm to property and/or life if done poorly. If I was told that the guy who flips burgers at McDonalds had 1 month of training, I’d not be concerned. But if I was told that the surgeon about to operate on me had one month of training, I’d be freaking out.
Has anyone ever told you that you might receive an operation by a surgeon who had trained for only one month?
Is the hypothetical threat captured in your scenario relevant, credible, or realistic in relation to the particular distinctions from the context?
They were just demonstrating that the labor of the surgeon does actually require more skill. Because it does, objectively.
In this case it was a straw man argument.
A straw man fallacy is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be “attacking a straw man”.
The conversation was about how all labor is skilled labor, then you brought up an entirely audacious hyperbole about a specific career field and argued against your own example. Yes, surgeons need more training than a burger flipper, and yes, they deserve apt compensation for that disparity in time and expertise, but that does not mean that the burger flipper is “unskilled” or that the surgeon would be any more capable of flipping burgers because of their training to be a surgeon. Your “demonstration” was irrelevant to the topic at hand and constituted a bad faith argument. That is what you were being called out on, not the content of the argument itself.
In this case it was a straw man argument.
Let’s take a look at the original thesis from @unfreeradical, shall we:
Different kinds of labor take different skills, not more or less, better or worse.
I consider ‘skill’ to be measurable by the amount of time needed to acquire it. You can take somebody fresh out of high school, and turn him into a competent fry cook in a month, but not into a competent surgeon. Hence the surgeon requires both more skill, as well as different skills. Therefore the surgeon/fry-cook example is a counterexample to the thesis, and thus disproves the thesis.
but that does not mean that the burger flipper is “unskilled”
I never said that burger flippers are unskilled, or that they need no training, just that 1 month is enough to learn how to do it. So, basically you’re misrepresenting my argument to claim I’ve used a straw man argument.
No. They said that labor did not require more or less skill. They did not say that all labor is skilled labor. You, ironically, are fighting the straw man.
Some skills surely are less common within some population, and some may require more training above the skill sets generally shared within a society.
No one is suggesting receiving surgery from an uncredentialed surgeon.
Are such observations broadly relevant or valuable, though, within the context?
You said that different labor does not take more or less skill. Perhaps you were trying to make a different point that you are now trying to tease out socraticly.
Do you think making false statements is a valuable approach? Do you think a job requiring less skill is a bad thing or that it should be respected any less than one that does?
Are such observations broadly relevant or valuable, though, within the context?
Yes. Skill can be measured by the time needed to attain it. Since the skills needed by a surgeon take years to acquire, the surgeon requires more skill than the fry cook. This is a counterexample to your thesis. And by being a counterexample to your thesis, it is relevant and/or valuable. Unless of course, your thesis were to be considered irrelevant and worthless.
With the term ‘training’ I mean all job relevant education. As in, a surgeon whose entire medical education happened within 1 month, not a surgeon who graduated med school and then was trained for 1 month as a surgeon.
Is the hypothetical threat captured in your scenario relevant, credible, or realistic in relation to the particular distinctions from the context?
Yes, it illustrates that for some tasks, training is more essential than for other tasks. Also, why are you asking that?
You know medical training is on the job hands on and every doctor is expected statistically to kill someone, not simply not save someone but actively lead to their death in one way or another.
🐈 They do spend years in med school before they are allowed to kill a patient, though.
And yet, they are not only more skilled than someone who is not a doctor, but also more so than their younger self. It’s almost as if one can garner more skill through experience.
The issue relates to whether various kinds of skill express a natural ranking .
Has any suggestion genuinely produced, as a credible concern, the scenario you described, or was it rather constructed as a bogeyman that would obstruct even criticism that is substantive and germane?
Unqualified workers in safety relevant professions causing damages or even loss of life has happened.
Except some skills are much harder to learn and some skills are much more valuable to society than others. I would argue the hard to learn, more valuable to society ones are “better”. I don’t think the people performing them are better or worse, but it’s fair to elevate and celebrate certain jobs over others.
Some skills are associated with greater barrier to acquisition, or are considered as higher in social value, but both attributes are inherently nebulous and overall unquantifiable.
Characterizing certain skills as better, though, based on such comparisons, even if, for the sake or argument, the validity of such comparisons were conceded, is simply a subjective appeal without any meaning deeper than personal preference or bald assertion.
Within the current system of labor organization, by which labor is commodified within the relations between worker and business, labor is valorized not by value to society, with every member of society participating equally in resolving a value for each kind of labor, but rather by the value of workers’ labor toward business interests captured beneath the profit motive, that is, value expressly to the owners of business.
My man, this is not an argument for or against capitalism.
If two skills are of relatively close societal value, and one is harder to do, learn and master, that craft deserves more respect.
This is not a reflection of any individual.
Society is not uniform or monolithic. Society has structure, including various relations based on interests that may be shared or antagonist.
Social value is not intrinsic to skill, nor to any other target of valorization, but rather determined from processes of valorization bound to the surrounding social systems.
It is unequivocal that our society valorizes labor not for benefit shared generally across the public, but specifically for its value to private business.
It is also questionable that a skill itself may carry a demand for respect that is separable from respect as understood by having a personal target.
Idk what takes more skills, but I sure as hell know that you won’t catch me dealing with fast food customers ever no matter how much you pay me
Dealing with abusive customers surely is a skill lacked by many workers generally, and thankfully not needed or even useful for many labor roles.
While I see your point that all labor has value, skills can be significantly more or less involved to learn and master. There are labor jobs that require certification or ongoing licensure to perform and those that do not. There are roles that involve the health and safety of others and those that do not.
I think the skills involved between fast food and warehouse packing are probably pretty comparable overall, but a blanket statement of “all labor is equal” really doesn’t hold true.
It was not implied that all labor is equal.
Much to the contrary, every kind of labor is qualitatively different from another, and bound to skill that is qualitatively different from other skill.
Several other contributors to the discussion have conflated various measures related to investment for acquiring a particular skill, with the skill itself.
Skill is not a quantity, nor may it be quantified, nor emerges a natural ranking for skill of various kinds.
Yes a ranking for skill emerges. It emerges from the scarcity and need for that skill. If a skill takes decades to master, there will likely be an inherent scarcity of masters. Those masters are obviously more revered and rewarded, and they should be. If a dunce in only capable of putting things in boxes, something that literally anyone, as well as some animals can do, then they are relatively worthless.
I already addressed your conflation of occurrence within a population for a skill versus its intrinsic attributes, in response to your previous comment.
Yeah, I’m an engineer. I’ve been a server, and I’ve washed dishes. I could go back to doing either of those, your average dishwasher could do neither of the others.
This is the American way though isn’t it? Push downward instead of moving upward. If flipping burgers is easier than packing boxes, and makes you the same money, why not quit at Amazon and start flipping burgers at McDonald’s?
The idea is that apparently it is not necessarily easier to flip burgers, but it requires less skill and training/education than picking items from warehouse shelves and putting them in a cardboard box.
I’ve never worked in a warehouse, but I’d assume there’s no significant difference between the two tasks when it comes to education or training. I’d be pretty pissed off if the guys at McDonald’s were paid the same as me, but I’ve spent years at university and accumulated some debt along the way.
Having done both, this is pots & kettles being pissed at each other for boiling water. Flipping burgers and packing boxes are both trivially easy on their face, and the hard parts of both jobs are accuracy, speed, and figuring out how to get your job done when your capitalist overlords have erased your support staff and passed their jobs on to you.
It’s really easy to flip burgers. It’s fucking hard to take orders, flip burgers, make drinks, and keep the fryer rolling by yourself while also doing freezer pulls to keep everything running.
It’s really easy to throw shit in boxes. It’s fucking hard to throw shit in boxes when you’ve been standing for 10 hours on your day off because of mandatory overtime, none of your equipment is maintained, none of the shit you’re supposed to be packing is where it belongs, and your management who are supposed to make sure that shit gets taken care of are busy sexually assaulting the 18 year old new hires.
Everybody’s jobs suck and corporate skeleton crews are making it worse. The average $15/hr worker in 2023 is doing 3 to 4 workers jobs from 2019. Eat the rich, Unionize, etc…
It’s really easy to flip burgers. It’s fucking hard to take orders, flip burgers, make drinks, and keep the fryer rolling by yourself while also doing freezer pulls to keep everything running.
Not to mention the occasional psycho who wants to pick a fight because there’s no mayo or something
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Pissed at who, is the question
Pissed at “what”. The system.
Pissed at whoever have the least power and are the most harmed by the system.
Why not?
ship it.
I’d be pretty pissed off if the guys at McDonald’s were paid the same as me, but I’ve spent years at university and accumulated some debt along the way.
But for some reason nobody gets pissed when someone whose whole actual job was to fall out of the right va jay jay and directly into the ivy leagues gets paid much more (100x in most cases) what they do to blabber on phone calls about market share or whatever.
McDonald’s workers aren’t the problem at all and nothing about the labor market changes substantially by them being able to afford diapers.
We have wealth hording dragons in this country ruining the whole thing with their wrath and greed and yet everyone’s pissed that some serf got an extra ball of cheese this week.
The tasks are quite different, and so is the training.
Each skill is different, not higher or lower, or greater or lesser, than another.
I agree.
Why not punch upward, to help fight the powers that punch down on everyone from their heights?
I don’t see anyone arguing for this here.
I’ve never worked in fast food but I’ve been to them and I’ve watched the workers. You can’t tell me packing boxes at Amazon is skilled labor and that shit isn’t.
Seems a lot of the comments are focused on debating the word ‘skill’ applied to each job while another capitalist gets off free while infighting amongst people who should be supporting each other in a shit world that capitalism built and benefits off of.
Enshitification is where there’s a CEO somewhere that fucks everyone over and remains untouched.
That person really should be the focus of hate here.
Maybe it should be considered that the amazon worker in the picture would be able to go to his boss and say ‘I could go flip burgers at McDonalds for the same as what you pay me, I want a rise’.
Enshitification is where there’s a CEO somewhere that fucks everyone…
That person really should be the focus of hate here.
Speaking of which, why is some waged labor characterized as “skilled”, and other not?
How has such a construct become entrenched, and in what context has it been utilized?
A legal definition stating that special training/experience/certifications is required for that job, vs “routine” job functions.
For the guy at Amazon this could be fork lift certs, equipment certs, etc For the McDobalds worker this could be hazardous job training for chemicals, hot work, food prep/food handling training/culinary training, and maintaining the equipment.
Note, both could have job responsibilities “beyond the normal range”.
That is what is intended by the “skilled” description.
I have provided labor to employers using specialized and advanced skills, though I had no formal credentials or training.
Was I an “unskilled worker”?
In a similar position, I’d consider myself a skilled worker in an unskilled role. I do work with hazardous stuff though, so maybe it is defined as skilled even though I didn’t have to go through hours of training.
In my case the role was considered formally as skilled, but demonstration of aptitude on the site and from past engagements was accepted at evidence of my having acquired the skill.
Seems to me like “skilled labor” is some job that cannot be quickly and easily learned by new workers. (Build me a shed is a little less intuitive than grill me a hamburger)
Is there value in characterizing certain kinds of labor as “unskilled”, and if so, who realizes the value, and who imposes the distinction?
So long as you get hung up on the catch phrases, those will be the easiest goal posts that get switched.
Just watch, tomorrow it’ll be defined by ‘how much more dangerous’ a job is to create the same infighting rift.
I am only adding that it may be worth considering how particular catch phrases are utilized and become entrenched.
Indeed, in a nominally free-market system, it would be completely irrelevant how much ‘skill’ is involved in a job. All that would matter for pay level is how much money the worker brings in. In an actually-free-market system, it would matter, because companies would have to compete on price, and they could lower their prices by paying less for skills available in abundance.
We don’t have a free-market system of any stripe. We have capitalism, in which the capitalists have been extracting record profits from the efforts of workers at company after company, while real pay has been stuck at the same level for decades. Neither he pay at McDonald’s nor the pay at Amazon reflect skill of the workers or the value they create for the company. It reflects only what the company can get away with.
Also, I’m not entirely sure that putting an item that a machine gives you into a box that the machine tells you to put it in requires more skill than working at McDonald’s.
I don’t really feel great about making fun of the skill needed for low paid jobs. I’m sure it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Edit: there is a left leaning argument that the label of “low skill labor” is used as a cudgel to justify low wages. If you think it’s so easy, try picking fruit for a season. An experienced fruit picker with years of experience will be many times more productive than a newbie.
Both jobs are difficult and worthy of respect, Neither are what you would traditionally consider skilled labor.
It is worth considering how norms and practices become established, or as you say, traditional.
True. Though in this case it’s pretty appropriate. Neither requires specialized education or training beyond normal job training.
While I am glad you opened with agreement, you proceeded then simply to sidestep my suggestion in the substance of your response.
I do agree with the general statement that norms and practices are worth examination after their establishment for continued validity. But this specific case isn’t a great example of a space where such consideration needs a deep dive. But here we are.
For dividing kinds of labor, the difference between skilled and unskilled is reasonably satisfied by my definition. Such designations are logistical. A career advisor in high school probably doesn’t have the time to delve into the nuance of work that requires further education (be it trade school, college, whatever) vs that which can be obtained with a high school diploma (if that) with every student (maybe not the best example, but lets keep moving). Skilled vs unskilled draws a useful, descriptive line for the sake of understanding. It also has the unfortunate effect of implying that skilled inherently deserving of greater respect than unskilled, which is wrong. I would hazard that it’s a wider societal issue that we feel the need to rank ourselves, but that’s a tangent I don’t want to go off onto. There’s an argument for a change in vocabulary to mitigate this (specialized vs general maybe?), but I would think that some terminology would arise naturally regardless as such categories of labor will continue to exist and need description.
Labor is not organized through systems that are natural, but rather through ones that are social.
Terminology is not emergent from systems that are natural, but rather from ones that are social.
You insist particular terminology is useful, but decline to consider carefully for whom it is useful, or for whom it may be harmful.
Do you think career advisors represent the group in society that benefit most substantially from the terminology you characterized as natural and logical? Do you think their work is truly being expedited by its use?
How could you conclude that the reason norms and values have become established is not worth considering for some particular case, despite the utility of doing so in general, while declining actually to consider the particular case about which your reached your conclusion?
I would actually argue that the workers at the burger place have the harder job, because they would actually have to deal with people more and people tend to suck on terms of respect for those in lower-income jobs
I would argue people should work both for a few years before arguing one way or another… xP
Amazon works you like a slave, and monitors/measures every move you make. It’s a creepy, and a merciless environment if you cant cut it.
Also, and this is super important.
A lot of your work is performed in isolation. So while you dont have a “public facing” job, you will in fact feel the extreme opposite (depending on location, process, etc YMMV…)
Yep service industries jobs just really kill your humanity some days… if you happen to have all the asshole customers on same day you leave freaking pretty exhausted of a day serving shitty attitudedes.
If your boss is good he gives you one customer per year you can punch
I worked at BK in a dark time of my life. It was physically and mentally demanding. You had to memorize the order of every ingredient of every burger and assemble them in the least possible time and there were themed burgers or some shit so you had to re-learn from time to time. Wasn’t exactly un-demanding mentally. From time to time I had to re-arrange big packages in the cold storage for hours. Fun times. Very hectic and demanding job.
Agreed
It’s not making fun of at all. Skilled jobs are the kind of jobs you need to learn a specific skill to do, E.g building contractor. Unskilled jobs are jobs that are simple enough that almost anyone can do, E.g. flipping burgers or packing boxes.
No matter what kind of job it is, the employee MUST be compensated for their work fairly and be given adequate measures such as annual or sick leave to ensure that they remain healthy while working.
I’d rather a system where an employee can vote their bosses out of the job so that the bosses end up working for the employees rather than the other way around. A salary isn’t a gift and neither is labour.
Every job is easy and that’s why he wants someone else to do it instead of doing it himself.
It’s not “skilled” labor.
You need zero skills to work at Amazon.
That being said, you will learn things if you stay long enough.
Skilled labor is like a trade or where you need a specific education. I’m not even sure you need a HS diploma to work at Amazon.
Source: me, working in an Amazon FC
But yes the point of her reply is also very apt. Class solidarity friends. If you’re single making <55k or whatever the median income in your area is, there’s not a whole hella lotta difference regardless.
But I’ll also say this. There’s a lot of mfers that do MUCH less work at desk jobs, and in fact are entirely redundant and unnecessary, compared to a fry cook or Amazon tier1 employes.
I don’t think you’re looking at this the right way.
It’s not that packing boxes isn’t a skilled job.
It’s that working at McDonald’s is a skilled job.
Any job that requires a non-zero level of training (which is all of them) is a skilled job. The idea of “unskilled labor” is one perpetuated by the bourgeois to justify paying some people a shit wage and keeping them poor.
As an electrician “unskilled labour” does exist. It’s effectively the classification for anyone who can be trained in under a day and is thus replaceable. Unlike “skilled trades” who can take years of training and are not immediately replaceable.
These jobs are essential on site but their inherent replaceability keeps wages rock bottom due to competition at the bottom of the pay scale.
Examples are the “gopher” who fetches material, holds ladders, passes tools etc. Usually a young guy. Often this job only exists if there are no apprentices around, and is your foot in the door for apprentice if you show any initiative and aptitude.
Then there are the “goon jobs” like wheelbarrow pushing, unloading trucks or rough shovel work. These jobs have the worst ratio of meager pay to hard work possible, and in general suck ass and should be avoided at all cost. Honestly I don’t know why anyone shows up for these, I would rather pick up cans or bum for spare change
Although it can probably be agreed that Australia is an outlier for low wages, noting that we need more people to fill jobs, and that is the driver behind such high wages.
12 years ago I overheard someone who could not have been more than 20 years of age saying they wouldn’t work for less than $80/hour. That was in the middle of a mining boom when 10,000 people a week were moving west because the wages were higher than what many could obtain with a degree. School teachers, nurses etc were quitting their jobs to work in the mining sector.
The only requirement is a white card which you can now obtain online for less than $50 and a few hours of your time.
You seem determined to construct distinctions merely for the sake of distinctions existing.
These distinctions come about organically though. If you work with a crew of people doing tasks that require a lot of experience to do well, like cutting metal precisely, you will notice quickly who has that experience and who doesn’t. Specialization of trades came about naturally as societies progressed. Not all tasks need to be so precise or require training. The issue I think with the distinction is when people are not paid enough to live for a job, when their tasks are just as essential to the completion of the project as those making much more. Many jobs that are ‘unskilled’ were also ‘essential’ during the lock down phase of the pandemic. I agree with your point that the language we use is important, by calling these ‘low’ tasks unskilled it helps excuse the unfair pay.
The inherent attributes of certain skills, or kinds of labor, surely express natural distinctions, and their importance is supported by the quite robust tendency within society for the emergence of specialization.
However, the deeper structures of categorization and classification, as emphasized in the particular comment, are more dubious respecting any genuine meaning or validity, and certainly may tend to confer harm to those on whom have been imposed less prestigious ranks.
Well yes and no. I mean, there are no interviews at Amazon, like if you can show up, have an ID, and can communicate in virtually any language, they will find a job for you… I just don’t consider that skilled labor in the same sense as being a plumber or engineer or teacher, where you really need to study and know specific things before you can competently perform the work.
I mean, sure being able to walk and read and use your hands are skills, but really basic level.
I just don’t consider that skilled labor
And that’s why it’s not up to you, because you completely missed the point :)
Working as a teacher or engineer relates very weakly to academic study, and very strongly to the interaction between innate talents and practical experience.
There’s no such thing as unskilled labor.
Why do think that learning things is different from gaining skills?
