this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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There is no such thing as unskilled work. That is pure classist bullshit.
If I can put you on a factory line and get you doing the job in less than 10 minutes how is that not unskilled work?
Because it takes a special kind of person to stand in one place for 8-12 hours repeating the same repetitive motion every day for years. I don't have the patience for that shit
You are fortunate to be in a position where you have a diversity of employment options. Remember this.
Interesting response. I got my CompTIA A+ cert so I could have more options, and applied at over 150 jobs before I got an interview. I'm very aware of how fortunate I am, but it wasn't like I just walked away from factory work easily. I worked in five different factories before I got into tech, and I'm making less than I was before. But my skills are better in other fields for sure
LMAO, that's a MADE UP job. It literally doesn't exist. The amount of mandatory safety training from working in any factory environment excessedes that. That's before you can start learning how to use the production software and automation that the company uses to measure productivity. Finally you have to do the actual task and learn the processes and exceptions that have made it so that the job isn't cost effective to automate in the first place.
Now that's a big company environment. Big companies are the only ones with the economies of scale required so that your can even have employees that only do one thing. At a small company everyone has to wear many hats and there is no such thing as an person that does only one job "you could learn in 10min"
It's easy to imagine "unskilled labour" when you make it up in your head. What sucks is when you then use it to dehumanize and underpay real humans because of your made up fantasy of unskilled labour.
Obviously someone that hasn't spent much time in a factory and don't know what they are talking about.
Sure you got to go through all the safety requirements but that's not a skill.
I've seen job were people load material into a machine and people box finished good, or people destroying WIP, or people moving material, or picking up WIP.
You are just confidently incorrect. A skilled job is something where you are trained and/or have experience in and it takes a long time to teach and learn. Unskilled is were you can grab people from the street and get them working within a day.
Surely you can see why based on supply and demand and cost of training both for the person and the business that unskilled pays less. Why should they be paid the sane as skilled work? It doesn't make sense.
Yes, when you dismiss everything these jobs require as "not skills" then anything can be unskilled labour. Yeah of course working safely in an industrial environment isn't a skill, even babies can do it, that's why conservatives everywhere are trying to bring back child labour!
Well if you change the definitions of things then anything can mean anything.
I don't know what you expect. The fundamental reason unskilled labour is paid less is because basically anyone can do it. You can call it whatever you want but it won't pay the same amount as skilled labour, or whatever you want to call that.
I don’t know, still sounds like a skill to me.
Not sure where you draw the line here, 20 minutes of training, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year? What interval of training inherently makes someone’s labor magically “skilled” and therefore more valuable and worthy of better treatment?
We could just decide that all labor is valuable and treat people with dignity. The “skilled” and “unskilled” workers have significantly more in common than “skilled” workers do with their bosses.
If they could learn that quickly and perform the job that fast, that's a skill. Could everyone get up to speed and start producing things that quickly? I've worked plenty of factory jobs. Most of them aren't simply pressing a button mindlessly, and your speed is a factor. Work faster, produce more, you're employing a skill others may not possess.
Not everyone no, some people have severe mental and physical disabilities.
Everyone that showed up could do the job in that amount of time from what I understand. Some people left because they didn't like it and some people had issues with authority or we lazy and wasn't asked back. But there was a revolving door or temps coming through and no one seemed to struggle.
there is labor that can* be done with extremely little skill. Think vacuuming a large flat room with nothing valuable on it, that task could be done (more or less) with a robotic vacuum. Entire jobs might not be fully replaced but labor demands can be greatly reduced.
*not necessarily done well, but done to minimum standards
You know what it means, god dammit. There's jobs anyone can fake with a week of training and there's jobs that need six years of school to not kill people.