"Unskilled labour" is a capitalist myth used to justify poverty wages.
"Unskilled labour" is a capitalist myth used to justify poverty wages.
It just means "no prior knowledge required". It's not a myth lol
Even McDonalds trains you to use the equipment before they let you use it.
Then why is it justified to pay people poverty wages? Your answer doesn't cover that.
I think unskilled there just implies no prerequisite knowledge required
That's just entry level. There's plenty of entry level skilled labor out there.
The term being changed to mean something else by whoever is writing these articles is the real crime; how do you not understand what unskilled labor means? Changing the term isn't going to earn you better compensation for something that doesn't require formal or specialized education. Get over it.
Thank heavens we stopped hiring unskilled labor.
Anyway, back to hiring from a talent pool that is as wide as possible due to a lack of barriers to entry because no particular requirements are necessary for employment and thus we can get away with paying the bare minimum and still getting enough job applicants. If only there was a word for that scheme...
Maybe if they were called "jobs that don't require years of training" instead.
Though I agree in principle. Just because a full-time job doesn't require years of training, doesn't mean it shouldn't pay at least a living wage.
Nooo. But it's a conservative myth those jobs don't require training!!!11 Try reading meme again
Does the label even matter?
When lots of people would do the job, and many even for less than you, why not hire someone else for less?
When you're the only one who qualifies, the situation reverses. Why bless that company with your work, when you can go to someone else who pays more?
Maybe it's all just supply and demand within the limits of regulation.
I think calling it a surplus labour or something similar would be more descriptive.
Something that gets across that it is not an 'in demand' labour, which is the real reason it's low paid.
Note. I'm not saying it's right that it's low paid, just talking through the issue of why it is.
Yes, talking about is, not ought.
Something that gets across that it is not an ‘in demand’ labour, which is the real reason it’s low paid.
Similarly, we see astonishingly low wages for ridiculously high skilled work, for example scientists.
Maybe it's really all about unvalued labour. Or surplus labour, as you say. While having rare skills is no guarantee for being valued, lacking those surely doesn't help in getting more value either. So I think there is a correlation between unskilled and low pay, even if it's not a direct cause.
When the ability to learn said skill is gatekept by the wealthy it ceases to be supply and demand
So make a meme about education should be free. There will always be unskilled labor. I can show someone how to use a lawn mower in 20 minutes, or screw caps on a tube in an assembly line.
I don’t need to pay someone extra to go to school for 4 years to do those jobs.
I agree that would be unfair or however you want to judge it, but I don't see how your conclusion follows.
It does not matter if the acquisition of qualification is gatekept, subsidized, free or restricted. Either way, you have a pool of people who are qualified for a job, and that pool has a size. Smaller pool roughly correlates with higher pay.
It's supply and demand, regardless of why the pool has it's size.
I also think it has never been that easy to learn things. Wikipedia, YouTube, social media ... sharing skills, following your interests, learning whatever you'd like to learn ... imagine you had to ask your dad for permission or be accepted into a guild for it.
Poverty wages are paid to workers that are highly fungible.
The concept of unskilled labor refers to tasks that require little or no specialized training or knowledge to perform. This can include manual labor or work that requires very basic skills. In reality, this type of work has existed for centuries, long before capitalism emerged as an economic system. For instance, agricultural work during the feudal era falls under the category of unskilled labor. Even today, there are numerous industries with high demand for such workers, from construction sites to warehouses.
Regarding the claim that unskilled labor is a "capitalist myth," it's important to note that while capitalism does promote a competitive market where businesses strive to minimize their costs (including labor), this concept has existed since the beginning of human civilization. It is not exclusive to capitalism. However, the extent of exploitation and the justification behind poverty wages might have intensified under a capitalist system due to private property rights and the profit motive.
When a business owner hires unskilled labor, they expect these employees to be less productive than those who possess specialized expertise or training. Consequently, businesses tend to pay lower wages to workers who do not contribute significantly to their profits. This notion may seem unfair to some, but it stems from the law of supply and demand. If there's an oversupply of unskilled labor, employers have the upper hand in setting wages at levels that meet their needs. As a result, many workers accept lower wages because they lack alternative employment opportunities.
In summary, the existence of unskilled labor predates capitalism, and its association with poverty wages is not solely due to this economic system. The concept of unskilled labor reflects tasks that require little training or knowledge, which can be found across various historical periods and societies. Furthermore, the link between low-paid unskilled labor and capitalism arises from market forces that determine wages based on supply and demand. Thus, calling unskilled labor a "capitalist myth" used to justify poverty wages oversimplifies a complex issue that involves factors beyond the scope of any one economic system.
It's crazy that you needed to write this essay to explain to Lemmy folks that:
- unskilled/low skill labor does in fact exist
- it was not invented by the cApITaLiSm boogeyman
- gets paid lower relative to other positions in the industry because they're both easily replaceable and on an individual level do not generate as much value to the business as skilled/trained/professional labor
The above things can be true while also saying that ALL labor (unskilled or not) should be treated with respect and basic human decency.
I'm not stanning capitalism here, I'm just tired of Lemmings who've either missed all of their basic econ classes or have never tried to run their own business telling me how to allocate wages relative to value.
Executive pay relative to everyone else is out of control, no arguments there. But skilled and professional labor is highly productive relative to unskilled, and should be compensated accordingly.
Exactly. If all labor was valued equally, why would people bother becoming surgeons or air traffic control people? Those can be very high stress jobs and require specialized training to do properly. Higher wages are a huge part of why people choose those professions.
I agree about executive pay, but dismissing unequal pay is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
You really can't tell when someone's using ChatGPT to shit out persuasive essays?
The real problem is that for most of western history, unskilled labor was largely performed by slaves.
Funny thing is, you balance earnings and expenses for slaves vs modern workers, and the math vastly favors the slave. But that’s bad for other reasons.
When a business owner hires unskilled labor, they expect these employees to be less productive than those who possess specialized expertise or training.
It may not even be that they are productive on their own, but that they have essential skills or knowledge that allows the business to function. For example: they may be one of few people who know the ins and outs of a specific mission-critical system, and that knowledge may not be easily transferrable.
It’s not just how much you contribute to profits, it’s also how easily you can be replaced. If you contribute a lot to profits, but you can easily find 100 others who can replace you, you’re still not getting a big paycheck.
I have to ask, why are we even working so fucking hard??
What has all of this hard work we've been doing accomplished? Our infrastructure is failing. We're throwing food away. We are wasteful and killing the environment. What has 'hard work as a virtue' gotten us?
Can't we just live our lives??
It's not about us. It's all for our glorious owner class and keeping the dream/lie going🙃
Check the distribution of wealth in your country and around the world, that's where the fruits of our work end up. Also just throw-away or downright destructive labor, like making shirts that turn into garbage after one month, or drugs and entertainment products that make people addicted instead of healthy and happy.
Farming is "unskilled" labor?
Holy fuck, come to a farm one day. A single day could encompass anything from forensic accounting, roboticist, veterinarian, or heavy duty mechanic.
that's uh, that's part of the point of the meme. a lot of "unskilled" jobs are like that.
Those cunts in their ivory towers need to stop thinking that it's the 19th century ffs.
Idk man my labour is pretty unskilled, I think anyone could do it really (I'm a middle manager)
But it is still labo--AH AMANAGER! GET IM!
Yes and no. It’s all about how replaceable you are. If you have a super limited skil and I demand l set like lots of types of engineering, software development, or any other discipline that requires many years of study- I would consider you “skilled”
“Unskilled” roughly translates to “we could teach anyone to do it”. There isn’t a big learning curve to flipping burgers- I’ve flipped plenty myself and it was not a vibe.
They should still be paid a little bong wage either way
One of these things is not like the others.
I respect anybody working a job, especially since ther work environments are almost always worse than mine. However, their qualifications don’t concern me too much. I assume they get the necessary training.
But a bricklayer building my house or office? I think that’s a skilled trade where I want to know more about their experience.
The masons try to keep a low profile even promoting themselves as unskilled because they are the secret power behind the country.
Amazon worker has his dick out. I think he needs more skill first
On the weekends I've been working on a concrete foundation for my new fence...talk about unskilled work. I'm having to scrape every ounce of shit I've ever learned from my dad to skill this wall into existence. It's 90% labor, 10% skill. So that tells you how much this should be paid in comparison to my actual desk job.... okay fine engineering is way more difficult in skill but like 10% labor so we can still equate stuff to stuff.
It boggles the mind that a CEO could earn much more than several to hundreds to thousands of workers do. That's just not right. That's robbery.
It’s also a great tool to keep the slightly less poor turned against the not poor. Oh they don’t have skills, so they don’t DESERVE to get off of welfare when working full time hours.
Right, that's sound logic. Why can't we raise the minimum wage to $600/hr? Solves all problems right?
"Skill" in this sense can be boiled down to "replaceability due to automation." The Industrial Revolution was as much about displacing highly trained, highly skilled craft laborers as it was about increasing raw production numbers. Highly trained craft workers up to that point handled most production of most things that weren't food. To get around paying these folks for their training and skill, industrialists invested in automation so they could replace people who had literally trained for years in that craft with someone who just walked in off the street. Instead of having a team of carpenters who'd trained for years working in concert on every step of a process, you had a series of individual stations on a production line and only needed to train a new hire against their single specific role in the production line, not the whole process. The breaking-up of labor into small steps shared out across teams, in roles that could be trained in weeks or days instead of years, is kind of one of the core techniques of industrial production.
Because of the relatively less training needed to get started on the production line, factory owners were able to drive down wages substantially across the board and displace craft labor. The industrial revolution boosted profits as much by driving wages down as it did by increasing production, and using a hierarchy of "skill" (where the factory owners are constantly trying to replace workers with leverage) to pay workers less was one of the ways it did that.
Anyways, so yeah. There's always been work that's more skilled and less skilled, but the term "skilled labor" sort of derives from this phenomenon during the Industrial Revolution. In that sense, it is totally bullshit meant to drive down wages.
EDIT: Found some snippets on general history sites regarding this process: https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3517
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/industrialization-labor-and-life/
A related art movement, the Arts and Crafts movement, which arose as a response to the impact of industrialization on craft labor: https://www.thecollector.com/industrial-revolution-arts-and-crafts/\
EDIT: A word
Why does the bottom right corner guy have his dick out
He's peeing into a bottle.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/25/amazon-delivery-workers-bathrooms-memo
Getting your dick out isn't a skill so falls into the unskilled labour territory
Why is the black woman labeled a myth?
True. That’s why I never did high grade studies.
🙄👌👍. This is like listening to trumpsters.
Go work in a McDonalda for a day, that will change your tune
I've done plenty of simple unskilled hard work. Blueberry raking, worked in the kitchen of a pub doing dishes, bussing, cooking; uhaul dispatching and fixing trucks. Although fixing trucks is certainly not unskilled.
What point are you trying to make? Part of the discussion on the term 'unskilled' labor is that it helps justify lower pay, when everyone should be paid at least a living wage no matter the 'skill' level or replaceability of a worker. There is useful meaning to the terms 'skilled' and 'unskilled' in labor but people view it as disparaging to jobs like cashiers or waitstaff because there are skills that are required to do those jobs well, though obviously different than being trained as a welder or another trade.
By referring to these jobs as 'unskilled', people will have less of a problem with workers in these positions being seen as replaceable, because 'anyone can do it', even though if you've ever been a waiter or in a similar 'unskilled' job you'd know it's difficult and not everyone is capable of doing it well.
ITT: people justifying poverty wages
Yes, nobody should be able to legally work unless it's for a lower bound of like $200/hr and absolutely free-ass healthcare
Preposterous framing of a simple issue. People need money to survive. Jobs that need doing that don't pay people enough to survive shouldn't exist. Yes, healthcare should be free-ass.
So you think a barista should be paid as much as a surgeon or nurse practitioner, both with more than a decade of education and correlated schooling expenses?
Can I have some of whatever you're smoking?
The meme isn't saying that they should be paid the same, it's saying that just because you're a janitor doesn't mean you deserve to be living off of ramen packets and 4 hours of sleep every day.
A janitor is skilled labour though.
So the issue is already moot because people don't even understand the nuances in the job market.
A janitor can kill people if they don't do their job properly, or themselves, if they use any of their tools improperly. It can take several years for a professional cleaner to become well trained.
An unskilled labour position would be a cashier or barista. A farmer requires years of training and should be paid according to the amount of effort it takes to become a trained farmer. The cook (used to) require a red seal, which is several years training, now days it's microwave/fry/flip and is thus unskilled into robot replacement.
The examples even used in the meme suck. The landscaper and construction workers are absolutely skilled labour.
This is trying to 'equalize' the job market but you can't do that. Different jobs require different training and you should be paid accordingly. The only people 'justifying' poverty wages are the billionaires, no one else thinks that 7 dollars is appropriate, however, by trying to push this meme the OP and a lot of people in the replies are trying to pretend like 'any job that doesn't have a degree associated is 'unskilled labour' according to capitalists' but that's not the case, and even the investing market doesn't believe that, i.e. 'da capitalists'.
... that's a fucking leap. If the nurse practioner has a house to live in; food on the table; and likes their job. What the fuck do they care if a barista has; a house to live in; food on the table; and likes their job????
Edit: If there is anyone here who still believes in the meritocracy, I got some shit to tell you all. You poor people still believe your ticket will come due someday and it's all gold toilets from there.
You immediately changed the core of the discussion to fit your view not to actually discuss the matters at hand.
"Unskilled labour" = job you can be trained in, in under two months
"skilled labour" = decades of education and experience requiring acute professionalism in order to not kill people
No one said the barista can't have a house, I specifically said, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, "you expect a barista to be paid as much as a surgeon or nurse".
No. Because you do not deserve the pay of a surgeon or nurse and you do not have the expenses of a surgeon or nurse.
FYI medical school is extremely expensive, and so is post secondary education in any form. I say this because your clear illustration of ineptitude leads me to believe you have very little formal education, if any.