Depends what you mean by "unskilled labour". Literally no skills? Yeah that doesn't exist, and is impossible to exist as even the most simple of motor tasks like walking are learned and therefore "skills".
If by "unskilled labour" you mean jobs that require no formal training and your average person could be trained up well enough to not need to be constantly trained/supervised in a week or two? Then there's lots of those. Maybe "low skilled labour" is slightly better but still a bit misleading (you still develop skills and improve in those jobs, it's just you're "good enough" at it in a relatively short period of time).
Because capitalism, when you're easily replaceable it means the employer can shop around more and find people willing you did the job for less so the pay is low. You aren't paid by how hard you work, but by the "value" you bring and how hard it is to find someone else.
Yeah, I'd argue 'unskilled labour' or 'low skilled labour' doesn't necessarily mean you should be paid poverty wages.
Imo that's a regulation/policy issue, not a capitalism issue, but I'm happy for someone to talk me through why that isn't the case.
The problem is that you aren’t paid by the value you bring. We have to fight tooth and nail to get even a fraction of what we’re worth, even in skilled jobs, and there are many executives that realized that they’re better off instilling fear of firing into people than they are worrying about whether or not someone can be replaced. Hell, most of them don’t even have the barest respect for senior workers and will happily replace them with a less skilled, but also cheaper, worker to save a buck in the short-term.
The concept of supply and demand in jobs has died because we lack the ability to enforce it. It’s completely fucked up. I heard someone say recently that it shouldn’t be a “job market” but a “labour market” and I fully agree. They need us, most executives are just dead-weight with money, so why the fuck do they get to be the beggars and the choosers?
Ultimately, if we were paid based on the value we bring then CEOs wouldn’t be getting millions of dollars of bonuses while laying people off to try to keep their own worthless jobs for just one more quarter. If we were paid based on the value we bring then millions of essential workers would be in a much better position but instead they can’t even get raises that match inflation. Like, if your workplace doesn’t, at the very least, give you an inflation-based adjustment to your salary before ever even getting to a true raise then that place is taking you for a ride.
I mean I get where you're coming from, but you don't get to set your own worth: your worth--and the worth of anything you try to sell--is only what someone is willing to pay for it. The only way to fix this is regulation and proper care for setting and maintaining wage rules or just cutting the shit and going to a UBI system.
That's the point, the myth is always about "unskilled labour" and that's specifically what pro-capitalist people believe - that low skill is the same as unskilled and low wages workers are "unskilled" and that's why they deserve to stay where they are because they are brainless. And I am obviously above that, so you better not raise the lowest wages to the same as my level, it would be an insult to my skills that I totally have and they don't. That is specifically the message and the brainwashing.
It's supply and demand. If there are only a few of a thing, we pay more for it, if there are a lot of a thing then we (mostly) buy what is cheapest. This is the labor equivalent. There are people who will go out of their way to not buy the cheapest thing if it comes from Walmart or Amazon or whatever. Living wages are basically this (instead of hiring undocumented workers for pennies on the dollar) and it is always a good idea.
Leaving aside the metaphor, you can raise the wages as high as you like, but someone has to be willing to pay for it. If you mandate that every cashier must make at least $40 per hour, those jobs will be automated out of existence. It is really better IMO to start with universal basic income and go from there. Them if you don't have any particular marketable service you can provide, at least you still get to eat and have a place to live.
Not sure farmers and bricklayers are considered unskilled…
From a government perspective they are. If you ever try to immigrate to one of the "desired countries" you'll quickly find out how worthless the average worker is in the eye of a pen pusher.
In the US, bricklayers and masons are considered skilled construction jobs.
https://esub.com/blog/unskilled-semi-skilled-skilled-labor-defined/
Very certainly farm-hands and manual laborers are.
I’ll give you farm-hands, and there are plenty of manual labor jobs that fall under the unskilled category, but bricklayers certainly are not among them. Simply a poor example in that specific case. The rest of the graphic is fine.
Did you know that aircraft mechanics were considered unskilled labor until the job was "reclassified" during the Cold War due to the demand for laborers?
From a cultural sense, both farmers and bricklayers are absolutely considered unskilled by the general public. The average person makes no difference between the generic construction labor usually done by illegal immigrants (in the US) and a bricklayer.
In college I finally understood the quadratic equation. We had to use it to calculate the optimal amount of fertilizer to spread per acre.
The masonry field is skilled in design, engineering, etc. Bricklayers, not so much.
This has been posted before, but it's still very very relevant.
I'll note that a bricklayer isn't "unskilled" to anyone. Apart from that, I think this is fairly accurate overall.
In addition, I'll note that "class" is also a myth. "Upper"/"middle"/"lower" classes don't actually exist. It's just a term to refer to people who are seen to be more/less affluent, and has no bearing on reality.
The only "class" I care about is the bottom 90%, struggling to make ends meet. The top 1% can go fuck themselves. As far as I'm concerned, it's not a class war, it's a 90% vs 1% war, and we have the numbers.
I'll note that a bricklayer isn't "unskilled" to anyone. Apart from that, I think this is fairly accurate overall.
I lay a few bricks in the toilet every day. Doesn't take any skill to do that.
I mean, how much you get paid is usually related to how hard you are to replace. If it takes 1 week, 3 months, 1 year training, or a PHD in biomolecular engineering with 2 years of training.
They should make different amounts of money. It's an investment in people, and you have to pay them more to keep them.
It’s just supply and demand. It doesn’t matter how long you have to be trained or how many PhDs you have. Like it takes years to become a decent 3D animator, but those guys get paid peanuts compared to many other jobs that require the same amount of training. Since there are thousands of desperate fresh grad animators looking for a job every year. For every job at Pixar there is a line waiting for someone to get fired.
Also why for example plumbers and electricians get paid really well nowadays sometimes more than people with advanced degrees. Since there is a shortage of plumbers and electricians.
I have a PhD and this isn't true unfortunately. Most of my friends with PhDs struggle to find work relevant to their field.
I'd also like to know how much time it takes to train a CEO who makes half a million dollars a year.
Amazon dude just casually flashing society. Can't blame him, though, that's what I'd do.
I think he’s peeing in a bottle because Amazon harshly discourages taking breaks.
The way y’all talk about capitalism makes it sound like a conspiracy.
All labor is skilled. It is possible to fuck up even the simplest job if you don't know what you're doing or don't give a shit. If you have a job and you're not getting fired for incompetence then you are skilled at it
Is it? There are mind numbing jobs invented by capital but they do exist
Bullshit jobs often tend to be better paid however. No paper pusher is getting paid minimum wage iirc
From my own experience I can tell you that bullshit jobs are paid quite good but that's beside my point.
Unskilled labor is less a myth but rather a strategy of capital. In the past you needed skilled masons to build a house or what ever. Now you rather use concrete, a material anyone can learn to work which makes the worker expendable. Same with factories where skilled craftsmen were replaced by production line workers, reduced to barely more than extensions of the machine. This is really happening, it's not a myth, it's a way to take away our dignity. Bullshit jobs are a similar but different phenomenon.
I am honestly curious if there's a list of jobs that more or less only require a pulse.
