Drag doesn't know how to make a big mac. Drag doesn't know the procedure for packing an Amazon box. Drag doesn't know how to turn on the stove or where to find the tape. And drag sure couldn't do it as fast as the pros, even with instruction.
Drag doesn't know what the legal and organisational standards are on the amount of packing material to cushion fragile items, or what kinds of tape need to be used.
It might be better to call it low skill or something like that. The point is that there are jobs that can quickly be taught on the fly and have you productive in a few days, and that this is different from jobs that may require years of potentially highly specialized training. Working in a McDonalds Kitchen and in an Amazon warehouse are both much closer to the former than to the later.
The point is: While some difference in pay might be justifiable (to compensate for the lack of income during the time it took highly skilled laborers to get their skill and as part of a system of incentives to encourage people to pursue these careers), the magnitude of that difference in most places is very much not!
A full-time job should pay a wage from which a family can live. Doesn’t have to be great and doesn’t have to come with yearly vacations abroad, but it has to be enough for food, shelter, transportation and some entertainment. The problem is that we are very much not at that point any more. (Though this even extends to a lot of jobs that do require year-long training…)
You should visit my local mcd then, you'd change your opinion of unskilled not existing. Patty has to go between the buns? Nah. Forgot the cheese? Just throw it on cold and go. Order has to be remotely correct? Nah, custom orders get ignored. Fries have to have more rigidity than a 94 year old's boner? Nah, in fact here is some extra grease just seeping into everything from the fry box. Drink machine broken, everyone gets sprite, no refunds. We ran out of patties 4h before closing, are undercooked chicken nuggets okay?
Like I get mcd locations are usually franchised but holy fuck, when I pay $12 for a big mac meal and it looks and tastes like a vegetarian 4 year old built it, we have issues. A decade ago it cost $6 and was at least kind of decent food... Now it's just ass all-around.
You can rank anything, and piling boxes such that they don't fall over and kill someone is more dangerous with more expertise than cooking McDonald's burgers for 2min then doing it again.
Aircraft engineers and mechanics used to be considered unskilled labor until the 1950s. They were only "reclassified" during the Cold War because there weren't enough people going into the profession to keep up with the demand.
lol packing boxes at Amazon being skilled labor in comparison to the burger dudes. Like, my dude, you're about half a step above the dude putting a burger together then packing a bag with it, and I'm being generous.
Was literally going to say... there's more regulations/certifications in food prep, both for the business itself and the workers, than a lot of other jobs.
I think we're all missing the point here, and this is how they divide us. (By they I mean monied interests). Back in the 60s you could get a job air hammering in the same 8 bolts all day that would provide you a house, car, and your spouse doesn't work and you have 2 kids and go on vacation twice a year and the company takes care of your retirement. Both of these jobs (in ops post) require the same or more skill to do and you can't even afford to rent a studio apartment on your own. We need to stop looking at other "unskilled" labor and saying "they better not make a much as me" and start asking "hold on, why can't we both make more?" Rising tides lift all ships. The only people that suffer are the multi millionaires.
This isnt radical. If you work full time you should be able to afford what your parents and grandparents had in the 60s working full time.
Honest labor is honest labor, whatever it's moping the floor or engineering new bridges and rockets. We need each other. And we all want to have a sufficient amount of these funny play-money papers once we clock out for today, or, rather, not feeling limited by the lack of them up to the point of starvation.
It's getting to the point that just renting an illegal basement "apartment" requires 2 incomes in some places... I make $30/hr and almost half my income goes to this shit garage apartment I live in... Forget "legitimate" apartments, those prices are just absolute insanity.
Without looking at "professional" college degree required jobs, the VAST majority of jobs out there pay barely over $20/hr where I am... Where are you going to live on that kind of garbage?
I cannot stand the focus on "family income." It completely ignores the experience of the individual and lumps multiple incomes together to try to claim that people are doing well... Yeah well fuck me for being undesirable and permanently single.
Fry Cooks have to take classes on food safety. They are skilled labor. I'm not sure about the Amazon box guy but maybe both should have the trade union you need to be "skilled labor" in the actual sense of it.
Instead of reasonable pay, you’re offered a title and persistent lies about career growth. And it feels pretty shitty when you’re confronted with the fact that you’ve invested a bunch of energy in something that won’t pay off.
Don't blame the worker for results of working conditions they didn't create.
Amazon is known for micromanaging every aspect of warehouse work, do you really think Amazon lets workers take the time and initiative to select which type of box a thing gets put into? Hell no, all the company cares about is getting shit shipped as fast as possible.
This is a symptom of Amazon's management, not the fault of any one worker.
But seriously, that box took up so much erroneous space on the transporting vehicle, displacing other boxes that had to move to yet more vehicles. The extra emissions from these failed attempts at protecting the item (which is pushed up against the wall of the box, vulnerable anyways), is sad.
Bro, I went to college and got a degree in packinology. Not everyone is qualified to use scotch tape and bubble wrap. You know how many people die every year choking on packing peanuts?
All labour is skilled labour. If you have to be trained how to do something it’s a skill.
You think packing boxes is just putting things in boxes but I’m sure there is more to it, particularly when working for dystopian Amazon where they’re very strict with KPIs.
People called it unskilled labour as a means to pay people less.
Given the size of the boxes my Amazon stuff comes in you'd have to be extremely challenged not to be able to get that stuff in there. They're not exactly solving the Knapsack Packing Problem multiple times a day.
All labour is skilled labour. If you have to be trained how to do something it’s a skill.
semantically sure, but im pretty sure the implication is that it's a heavily skill based field, something that you can't just show up and start doing. As the term skilled labor would imply.
Would you consider someone who just learned chess to be a "skilled player" or would you consider someone who has quite the substantial knowledge of chess, and the ability to play very competently a "skilled player"
i don't disagree with you, but the point that i'm making here is that a high level chess player, would be a skilled chess player. A novice who just started last week, isn't going to be a skilled chess player either, they're going to be an amateur/novice player.
Same can be said for skilled labor, it's a specific type of labor that requires training and as you've said, a very specific skill set to be utilized.
Yeah and that's what "skilled labor" means. It is about people with higher skills required for their job, skills that are in high demand. There is a huge difference between a doctor, programmer, CAD designer, and a cashier.
Which is why the very idea of "unskilled labour" is ableist.
I had to work with an occupational therapist for 2 weeks to learn how to wash my dishes at home without having injuries or breaking my dishes. I could not have walked into a job as a fry cook just because it's entry level and "unskilled". I'd need to learn some skills first.
There's no such thing as unskilled labour for me personally, because any labour requires skill when your body or mind is disabled.
Did it take 4 years of school and another year or two on the job training to get proficient? There is such a thing as unskilled labor even if you personally have to work harder at it due to the cards you've been dealt.
I thankfully haven't had to do physical therapy, but from what I hear, it's painful and no fun if you're doing it right...hope your dishes are getting easier, friend.
Painful, generally (but it shouldn't be agonizing barring other health issues) and no fun really depends on the physical therapist.
The guy I went to was very nice and had 4 patients at a time in the big room, and everyone just talked to him, one another, or just worked on sets. It was actually quite pleasant to just do sets and listen to people talk about the best way to do a crab boil!
Which is why the very idea of “unskilled labour” is ableist.
they don't exactly call it capable labor or anything.
They call it unskilled labor for a reason. It's generally not complicated and not very hard.
Naturally being disabled makes things harder, but idk what you want me to do about that one. People with physical disabilities and the capability of doing labor don't generally go together.
i don't disagree, but that's a different problem. I don't think this is an ableist problem, i think this is probably more of a social service problem more than anything.
For some people with disabilities it's a social services problem because they will never have the capacity to work for their income with their own type of disability. For others like myself it's an occupational support issue. It took me a few years and several intensive OT programs, but I now ace every work task expected of me, I have progressed through my company and hold a senior position. After failing for 7 years after highschool to get a proper job, doing we'll in interviews and then being let go before my probation ended because I wasn't picking physical skills up fast enough, finally I landed a patient and understanding employer who responded to my OT and gave feedback to the my OT and worked with me to develop the skills I was lacking.
This was done through an existing social support program in my country where the government will subsidise a business for part of an employee's wage, if that employee is enrolled in a disability occupational program, that way the business isn't paying full price for half the labour while the employee skills up.
This program has existed for over 30 years, and yet it's very difficult to get businesses to enrol in the program because it's still expected that you come to a job on day one with the fundamental skills like being able to hold a pen properly to write (took me until I was 21 to consistently do it without pain, but I got there eventually). I've been on both ends of the program now, having signed up my organisation for a new hire, just a few years after I had finished my program. From the business perspective it's 15 minutes of paperwork, you can hire a temp with the money the government gives you so you can have 2 employees for the price of one, and sure it's a bit awkward because one of those employees isn't yet fully able to do the job, but you quickly see improvement because you've got the right professionals involved, and it doesn't matter because if its truly entry into level the temp will have it covered while the disabled employee learns.
This program exists, so within my country specifically I'd argue that's where the ableism comes in. When the financial cost of hiring someone with a longer than average training period is removed, the only other reasons that remain are that you'd rather just hire the easiest person to train and that person is likely able bodied, and I'm not saying that's wrong, that's smart business, so I completely understand why businesses do it. My point I guess is that my current employment status and output of work is proof that people in my situation aren't unemployable because we can't do the work, we're unemployable because we pose an added barrier to training, and therefore we have no edge in a capitalist society.
Even if I was eligible for a good, livable disability pension I would still want to work/volunteer in my same role because it's what it love doing with my time and it fulfils me even without a pay cheque, but that still wouldn't be an option for me without access to OT programs today learn through skills I need (I'm not eligible for a pension, in my country if you can work more than 8 hours a week you can't claim a disability pension. I can work 10-12 hours, so I can't claim)
For some people with disabilities it’s a social services problem because they will never have the capacity to work for their income with their own type of disability. For others like myself it’s an occupational support issue.
i consider both of these to be some form of social support to be honest.
the rest of the post i pretty much agree with. As you said it's not a competency problem (although technically it is in terms of the hiring procedure) it's a training latency problem. Even beyond that point, there are a lot of people with physical disability who can do various different kinds of work. Physical disability is rather broad as defined, so it could include someone with an amputated limb for example. While that's not going to help, it's most certainly not going to kill their job prospects, unless they're a trained pianist or something. That might pose a problem.
I think the conceptual meaning of ableism is just, weird. For one thing it could very easily be implied that different people are "differently" able, which could be construed to mean that black people aren't smart enough to work office jobs (to pull a historically relevant example) the other implication is better, i can't really think of any exact definition that would pin down this phenomenon in such a way that i would be comfortable referring to a specific thing as "ableist"
I think the closest that you might get is incredibly bad accessibility design, stairs for someone in a wheelchair, for example. I guess to me ableism is more of a passive thing, than an active thing. Not hiring someone based on disability would either be discriminatory or just good ole capitalism in my eyes depending on the situation.
You might be able to use ableist to broadly describe aspects of society, but i feel like that's going to be really uncharted territory and i don't really want to go there.
I guess ultimately i just think discrimination is more than suited in like 95% of cases here lol.
No. "Skilled labour" means that you're hiring someone because of a skill or training they already have.
A carpenter is skilled labour because you expect a carpenter to already be able to work with wood. Your not going to train them from scratch on the job. They'll already have served as an apprentice or been trained in some other way.
A fork lift driver would need to have a license before you hired them. Skilled labour.
Somebody packing boxes or flipping burger is "unskilled labour". On day 1 you'll be taught the job. There will be no prerequisite skills needed. It doesn't mean "there's no skill in this job", just that "there is no requirement to have a skill to apply this job".
It makes the apprenticeship an "unskilled" hire, but afterwards they'd be a "skilled" hire for any carpentry job.
The term just means "Is there some required experience for this job on day 1?" not "Does this job require skill to do it well" because that's true of all jobs.
I sit at a desk at home, send emails, and make calls and get paid comparatively handsomely - these people have to stand over searing hot griddles, deep friers, and industrial equipment, risking serious injury at any moment for (close to) minimum wage. Doesn't seem right to me.
If we take the 150,000 / min from the meme as given, then that's 9,000,000 / h. That also gels with the factor of 562,500. I think friend_of_satan just dropped a 0 there.
Stratification Economics- that's the term for it. It's such a bizarre and fucked up thing that humans would rather make sure their relative status is better to another group rather than objectively imroved overall.
"Why aren't the rich people being allowed to hurt other workers more than me? What do you mean those other workers are standing up for themselves? I am very mad about this!"
Either way it's Labor and the profit should be shared with the person doing the work. Sure it took Capital and risk to set the whole thing up, there's costs involved with running the warehouse, etc. So I'd course it's not split. But the dildo at the top shouldn't be taking the Lion's share.
There's no risk to the capital class. They do not risk their livelihoods, they barely risk their next yacht. The only people that share risk are the working class, not the owners.
To the point a small business entrepreneur is risking their life savings, they risk no more than a worker since they can always get a job. The bankruptcy courts will not make them homeless, will not take their last car, and will not starve them. They make it seem like failure is death itself, but no, it's just back to being a worker.
There’s no risk to the capital class. They do not risk their livelihoods, they barely risk their next yacht. The only people that share risk are the working class, not the owners.
the risk is primarily shifted towards the beginning of the businesses lifetime, later it can only really be hampered by skill issues and aggressive competition forcing you out of business. Think boeing. Or any number of companies that just, no longer exist.
Once you get to a certain size, it's really hard to fail unless the world literally changes, or the government kills you or something silly like that.
I would generally disagree with the statement that the working class is the one sharing the risk. Unless you mean some weird tangential thing, like being let go because the company fails, but that should be an obvious risk, i would think. There are a few exceptions, nortel being the only real prominent one i can think of. And that's mostly because they all got fucked over, not because it was risky, so that shouldn't have even happened.
Failing as an entrepreneur doesnt mean financial ruin, it means you have to get a regular job, just like the rest of the people that work for you.
The working class sharing the risk part is about when the owner class makes decisions that go poorly, the working class is pushed to make up the difference or they are downsized. The owner class doesnt bear the risks of their mistakes in any way other than financially.
Failing as an entrepreneur doesnt mean financial ruin, it means you have to get a regular job, just like the rest of the people that work for you.
failing is more complicated than this though. I've thought a lot about it. For an entirely online business, maybe. But if you have any sort of physical product, clothing as a simple example. Unless you're literally drop shipping/middle-manning this shit you have a significant infrastructure and capital investment/cost.
For one thing you need the capability and knowledge to be able to design and manufacture clothing. You need to be able to market it, you need to be able to test it and refine it, you need to be able to optimze the design so it can be produced easily. You need to spend time making product, packing product, inventorying that product, and eventually, shipping that product.
Sure you can pay other people to do this for you, but that's not how this works. You probably have to rent some sort of commercial space, or lease it. You need to outfit that space to work for your needs, you need to hire people to work for you, and you need those people to operate as an extension of you so they can operate most effectively, which requires both a lot of training and upkeep in terms of informational knowledge. You still need to deal with marketing, inventory, and shipping as well, that never goes away. You might continue doing design, you might do collaborative design now. And i haven't even mentioned tax or regulations and laws around this kind of stuff yet.
and if the business fails, you still have all of these assets, all of which you have to deal with, product being the worst asset, because it's effectively valueless. The assets you own in terms of equipment and materials might have some base value, but it's not much. If you have a lease that's going to be a bit of a nightmare to deal with. Not to mention the time and skill investment made into this business as well.
if you put all of these things together, and some arguably irresponsible financials this could very well spell financial ruin for a company and it's owner. Especially for small businesses, small business owners tend to be some of the most charitable business owners out there.
IDK why you keep saying they just have to go get a job, that's completely irrelevant here, considering that that was literally the risk to begin with. And you're ignoring all of the previously mentioned context as well. Seems like a downplay of the risk present.
The working class sharing the risk part is about when the owner class makes decisions that go poorly, the working class is pushed to make up the difference or they are downsized. The owner class doesnt bear the risks of their mistakes in any way other than financially.
sort of? It's not really shared risk, in some senses it is, because you might single-handedly bring down a small business if you really fuck something up, but just dont do that. You might be pushed to work more hours, or do more things, but i'm not sure what the legal basis is for that, and most of that would be done entirely on the working individuals side. Obviously working at a small company there is always the risk that the company goes under, but that's true for every company, and every job. People who work in trades/commission based fields will tell you this. People that do freelance will lament about this fact. It's nothing new.
Also to be clear, it's not explicitly capital investment, capital is the primary risk, but you also risk losing/wasting time, and knowledge as well.
and regardless, this is a different risk. The workers aren't risking their personal capital or investor capital on something. Their investing time and energy into a thing they believe in, in return for money. If that stops, they can "go get another job" as you said. They have quite a bit more flexibility here than the business owner. Since they don't have responsibility for any of these assets.
The owner class doesnt bear the risks of their mistakes in any way other than financially.
i would also like to point out, that in the term "capitalism" is the term capital, which means money. How else are they going to bear that? Emotionally?
I didnt mean to imply every business or situation is the same. Businesses are run as differently as there are opinions online, to varying degrees of success. When owners and management share the responsibility of the company with the working class, it can work perfectly fine.
When I say they only bear it financially I mean that literally. Defaulting on a business loan very rarely means losing a home or the means to feed your family. Thats why its accurate to say they just have to go get a job.
There is a difference in how people are treated when they lose their job vs losing their business. Its much harder to argue that losing your job is a good thing but plenty of people accept that business owners will fail before getting it "right".
I didnt mean to imply every business or situation is the same. Businesses are run as differently as there are opinions online, to varying degrees of success. When owners and management share the responsibility of the company with the working class, it can work perfectly fine.
of course. I just guess i don't agree with your fundamental conceptualization of the original statement fully.
When I say they only bear it financially I mean that literally.
Again, i'm just not sure that this is the case. I could argue that if your house burnt down, that you only lost something of financial value, but a lot of people, you probably included would disagree with me on that. I guess if you're strictly talking money, you would only be losing something financial in that aspect. But outside of finance there is plenty to lose.
I also don't really understand the whole "they just have to go get a job thing" couldn't you say the exact same thing about any working class person? Who is arguably in a better position to just "go get a job?" I might not be fully following the chain of logic here, but it feels like you're devaluing the company, while also devaluing the worker, you can't have a valuable company without a valuable worker, so i'm not really sure how your math works out on this one.
If you're just trying to make the point that they're "not royalty" i would agree with you but i'm not sure what the point of that argument would be.
There is a difference in how people are treated when they lose their job vs losing their business. Its much harder to argue that losing your job is a good thing but plenty of people accept that business owners will fail before getting it “right”.
it would make sense to me that people are treated differently in those different scenarios, i feel like this is the difference between losing a daily commuter, and losing a personal project car, for instance. You probably don't care very much about your daily commuter, but if you lost a project car that would hurt a lot more.
Employees that are also working for the company that goes bust are generally going to feel the same way as well as get a similar treatment. It's really only going to be workers at giga companies like amazon that people don't really care about because of how many people they move through the ranks.
are you arguing that it's good to lose a business now? I don't understand the line of reasoning behind this, i mean sure bad businesses won't survive but there are many good ones, that are just struggling. On the point about failing before getting it right, you can argue the same thing as a worker as well. The cost and learning curve isn't as steep though. That's kind of the entire point of the education system.
as for "losing your job is a good thing" this thread is old, so idk where that came from, but economically, as far as the market does, you need movement through any industry. Infinite growth is unsustainable (obviously) and having a static work force is going to greatly devalue some jobs, while incredibly overvaluing others. This is why some jobs are better than others at different times.
I guess you could argue the same for businesses, but that would apply to both businesses failing to meet market demands, and businesses exceeding market demands as well. So that's not applied in-equally or anything.
Everyone forgets the workers are taking a risk too. "Just get a new job" doesn't fly in a recession. It doesn't fly when your new boss engages in tax evasion and fucks up your SS/Medicare. Or you just walk into a buzz saw of toxicity and harassment.
We treat a business going under as a tragedy for the owner, but the workers are out of a paycheck too. And hey the owner can always get a job; no matter how far down they are, the bankruptcy courts will let them keep enough for rent/utilities/bills. So they aren't actually taking anymore risk than their workers.
Real question: is box packing at an Amazon fulfillment center considered "skilled" labor? If so, so is flipping burgers, I would assume. In which case, what exactly is unskilled labor? I thought it was basically any job you can get/do without any degrees, formal prior training, and/or certifications.
As far as I can tell, this is two eminently replaceable, definitionally unskilled laborers hating each other over who is getting fucked over harder.
If working at McD's can be stereotyped with the phrase "flipping burgers", I propose that packaging things at an Amazon warehouse be called something like... "boxing dildos".
It's ambiguous, though. They could be complaining about the frycooks making as much as them, or about the frycooks not making as much as them. You'd have to look at what else they posted to see whether they're generally pro-labor or not. Or ask them what they mean by their tweet. Both of which are made difficult by the username being blocked out.
It really isn't ambiguous at all, imo. He's clearly saying flipping burgers isn't skilled labour. Like that's literally what the sentence means, as he's comparing flipping burgers to "skilled labour", which he wouldn't do if he thought "flipping burgers" is "skilled labour".
He says he'll be "damned" if what he says are unskilled worked at McDonald's would be paid as much as him — who identifies as someone doing "skilled labour"
Could be a troll? The only difference is that food service is gross and squishy. Amazon has so automated the box packing that the hardest part is getting zoned out in the monotony and forgetting some critical step before you send the box away.
"Skilled labor" lmao. Look it up and sites like indeed.com call it having a law degree.
Some people dont understand that if the workers own the economy everyone benefits, also it doesn't matter how "skilled" your labor is when you're replaceable.
Lmao
Packs boxes at Amazon; believes he is skilled labor and fast food workers aren't.
Buddy, you're closer to being replaced by a machine than the burger flipper.
Them believing that they are skilled labor tells you all about the value of their opinion.
Flipping burgers and packing boxes are both skilled labour. There's no such thing as unskilled labour.
One can imagine just walking in blind and getting an order to do X of something right now without any guidance.
Drag doesn't know how to make a big mac. Drag doesn't know the procedure for packing an Amazon box. Drag doesn't know how to turn on the stove or where to find the tape. And drag sure couldn't do it as fast as the pros, even with instruction.
Drag is here to take your orders and ruin them in 3-5 business days.
OK, so what skill is needed to put Box A into Box B where Box B is three times the size of Box A?
What does the training involve?
Are there really people out there who can't do that (excluding reasons like physical disability)?
Drag doesn't know what the legal and organisational standards are on the amount of packing material to cushion fragile items, or what kinds of tape need to be used.
I think a better word would be common skilled labour instead of unskilled labour.
The whole idea is it’s a skill that the majority can pick up, then people used it to mean it’s worthless…
It might be better to call it low skill or something like that. The point is that there are jobs that can quickly be taught on the fly and have you productive in a few days, and that this is different from jobs that may require years of potentially highly specialized training. Working in a McDonalds Kitchen and in an Amazon warehouse are both much closer to the former than to the later.
The point is: While some difference in pay might be justifiable (to compensate for the lack of income during the time it took highly skilled laborers to get their skill and as part of a system of incentives to encourage people to pursue these careers), the magnitude of that difference in most places is very much not!
A full-time job should pay a wage from which a family can live. Doesn’t have to be great and doesn’t have to come with yearly vacations abroad, but it has to be enough for food, shelter, transportation and some entertainment. The problem is that we are very much not at that point any more. (Though this even extends to a lot of jobs that do require year-long training…)
You should visit my local mcd then, you'd change your opinion of unskilled not existing. Patty has to go between the buns? Nah. Forgot the cheese? Just throw it on cold and go. Order has to be remotely correct? Nah, custom orders get ignored. Fries have to have more rigidity than a 94 year old's boner? Nah, in fact here is some extra grease just seeping into everything from the fry box. Drink machine broken, everyone gets sprite, no refunds. We ran out of patties 4h before closing, are undercooked chicken nuggets okay?
Like I get mcd locations are usually franchised but holy fuck, when I pay $12 for a big mac meal and it looks and tastes like a vegetarian 4 year old built it, we have issues. A decade ago it cost $6 and was at least kind of decent food... Now it's just ass all-around.
Drag thinks you have discovered through personal experience which skills are required to be a good fry cook.
You can rank anything, and piling boxes such that they don't fall over and kill someone is more dangerous with more expertise than cooking McDonald's burgers for 2min then doing it again.
The risk of food poisoning is at least equal to your proposed danger stack.
Aircraft engineers and mechanics used to be considered unskilled labor until the 1950s. They were only "reclassified" during the Cold War because there weren't enough people going into the profession to keep up with the demand.
Yeah, that's why I'm convinced it's satire until I see more tweets.
lol packing boxes at Amazon being skilled labor in comparison to the burger dudes. Like, my dude, you're about half a step above the dude putting a burger together then packing a bag with it, and I'm being generous.
You need a permit to handle food.
Was literally going to say... there's more regulations/certifications in food prep, both for the business itself and the workers, than a lot of other jobs.
Packing a box seems easier than operating the machines at mcdos. Timing the operation, consistency, time pressure, angry clients, ...
And like. We've all ordered from amazon. We know how they pack boxes. There's no skill involved there.
That right there is why I'm hoping the xeet was sarcasm tbh.
I think we're all missing the point here, and this is how they divide us. (By they I mean monied interests). Back in the 60s you could get a job air hammering in the same 8 bolts all day that would provide you a house, car, and your spouse doesn't work and you have 2 kids and go on vacation twice a year and the company takes care of your retirement. Both of these jobs (in ops post) require the same or more skill to do and you can't even afford to rent a studio apartment on your own. We need to stop looking at other "unskilled" labor and saying "they better not make a much as me" and start asking "hold on, why can't we both make more?" Rising tides lift all ships. The only people that suffer are the multi millionaires.
This isnt radical. If you work full time you should be able to afford what your parents and grandparents had in the 60s working full time.
Honest labor is honest labor, whatever it's moping the floor or engineering new bridges and rockets. We need each other. And we all want to have a sufficient amount of these funny play-money papers once we clock out for today, or, rather, not feeling limited by the lack of them up to the point of starvation.
Exactly 💯.
It's getting to the point that just renting an illegal basement "apartment" requires 2 incomes in some places... I make $30/hr and almost half my income goes to this shit garage apartment I live in... Forget "legitimate" apartments, those prices are just absolute insanity.
Without looking at "professional" college degree required jobs, the VAST majority of jobs out there pay barely over $20/hr where I am... Where are you going to live on that kind of garbage?
I cannot stand the focus on "family income." It completely ignores the experience of the individual and lumps multiple incomes together to try to claim that people are doing well... Yeah well fuck me for being undesirable and permanently single.
woe is you, even more fucked are the people who don't want to be living in a multi person household. Let alone living with a partner.
(this comment is mostly a shitpost, i just think you phrased that part weird, dont mind me)
I want Amazon fulfillment center workers to be paid a living wage, but calling some of those jobs “skilled” is stretch.
The phrase has lost all meaning. People just assume its a personal attack now cause I guess American egos are in decline or something.
Waxing moon or some shit.
Fry Cooks have to take classes on food safety. They are skilled labor. I'm not sure about the Amazon box guy but maybe both should have the trade union you need to be "skilled labor" in the actual sense of it.
Instead of reasonable pay, you’re offered a title and persistent lies about career growth. And it feels pretty shitty when you’re confronted with the fact that you’ve invested a bunch of energy in something that won’t pay off.
Don't blame the worker for results of working conditions they didn't create.
Amazon is known for micromanaging every aspect of warehouse work, do you really think Amazon lets workers take the time and initiative to select which type of box a thing gets put into? Hell no, all the company cares about is getting shit shipped as fast as possible.
This is a symptom of Amazon's management, not the fault of any one worker.
Ugh.. Dumbasses must've been terrible at Tetris.
But seriously, that box took up so much erroneous space on the transporting vehicle, displacing other boxes that had to move to yet more vehicles. The extra emissions from these failed attempts at protecting the item (which is pushed up against the wall of the box, vulnerable anyways), is sad.
Working at McDonald's fucking sucks. They deserve far more in hazard pay.
Those bathrooms are proof those employees don't receive the hazard pay they should to clean those things. Mcdonalds.
Crab ass mentality. You should be asking why you get paid so little not keeping everyone else down
And the fast food shit is probably about as skilled as packing Amazon boxes the fuck you on about
Bro, I went to college and got a degree in packinology. Not everyone is qualified to use scotch tape and bubble wrap. You know how many people die every year choking on packing peanuts?
A brain sturgeon ain’t got shit on me.
I hate to break it to that guy but packing boxes isn't skilled labor either.
All labour is skilled labour. If you have to be trained how to do something it’s a skill.
You think packing boxes is just putting things in boxes but I’m sure there is more to it, particularly when working for dystopian Amazon where they’re very strict with KPIs.
People called it unskilled labour as a means to pay people less.
Given the size of the boxes my Amazon stuff comes in you'd have to be extremely challenged not to be able to get that stuff in there. They're not exactly solving the Knapsack Packing Problem multiple times a day.
My understanding is some algorithm decides what size box to use for an order, the packer packs that box.
The skill comes from the repetition of doing the task to become efficient enough not to be taken out back and put down by Bezos.
i would consider this being abused, not being skilled but ok
semantically sure, but im pretty sure the implication is that it's a heavily skill based field, something that you can't just show up and start doing. As the term skilled labor would imply.
Would you consider someone who just learned chess to be a "skilled player" or would you consider someone who has quite the substantial knowledge of chess, and the ability to play very competently a "skilled player"
I would consider they had different levels of skills. A skill level if you will.
i don't disagree with you, but the point that i'm making here is that a high level chess player, would be a skilled chess player. A novice who just started last week, isn't going to be a skilled chess player either, they're going to be an amateur/novice player.
Same can be said for skilled labor, it's a specific type of labor that requires training and as you've said, a very specific skill set to be utilized.
Eh. If you can replace someone with practically any able bodied person off the street and a week of training, it's not skilled labor.
Can you technically argue that 1 week of training equates to becoming "skilled"? Sure, but it's a dumb line to draw IMO.
It's dumb to draw any sort of line.
I think it fits the dictionary definition. Don’t you?
skill /skĭl/
noun
Proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience.
"painted with great skill."
A developed talent or ability.
"improved his writing skills."
An art, trade, or technique, particularly one requiring use of the hands or body.
"the skill of glassmaking."
If anything, I'd claim that burger flipping requires more skill than item boxing.
It's a skill. Just a lower skill, as it's not that hard to learn or become good at it.
Yeah and that's what "skilled labor" means. It is about people with higher skills required for their job, skills that are in high demand. There is a huge difference between a doctor, programmer, CAD designer, and a cashier.
My guy if you can learn the job first day off the street it is unskilled labor
Stephen King taught me that cracking eggs is skilled labor for homeless alcoholic vampire-slaying priests
Which is why the very idea of "unskilled labour" is ableist.
I had to work with an occupational therapist for 2 weeks to learn how to wash my dishes at home without having injuries or breaking my dishes. I could not have walked into a job as a fry cook just because it's entry level and "unskilled". I'd need to learn some skills first.
There's no such thing as unskilled labour for me personally, because any labour requires skill when your body or mind is disabled.
Did it take 4 years of school and another year or two on the job training to get proficient? There is such a thing as unskilled labor even if you personally have to work harder at it due to the cards you've been dealt.
I thankfully haven't had to do physical therapy, but from what I hear, it's painful and no fun if you're doing it right...hope your dishes are getting easier, friend.
Painful, generally (but it shouldn't be agonizing barring other health issues) and no fun really depends on the physical therapist.
The guy I went to was very nice and had 4 patients at a time in the big room, and everyone just talked to him, one another, or just worked on sets. It was actually quite pleasant to just do sets and listen to people talk about the best way to do a crab boil!
they don't exactly call it capable labor or anything.
They call it unskilled labor for a reason. It's generally not complicated and not very hard.
Naturally being disabled makes things harder, but idk what you want me to do about that one. People with physical disabilities and the capability of doing labor don't generally go together.
And yet we're given no other means to ensure our survival other than to try to labour for a chance to earn a living.
i don't disagree, but that's a different problem. I don't think this is an ableist problem, i think this is probably more of a social service problem more than anything.
For some people with disabilities it's a social services problem because they will never have the capacity to work for their income with their own type of disability. For others like myself it's an occupational support issue. It took me a few years and several intensive OT programs, but I now ace every work task expected of me, I have progressed through my company and hold a senior position. After failing for 7 years after highschool to get a proper job, doing we'll in interviews and then being let go before my probation ended because I wasn't picking physical skills up fast enough, finally I landed a patient and understanding employer who responded to my OT and gave feedback to the my OT and worked with me to develop the skills I was lacking.
This was done through an existing social support program in my country where the government will subsidise a business for part of an employee's wage, if that employee is enrolled in a disability occupational program, that way the business isn't paying full price for half the labour while the employee skills up.
This program has existed for over 30 years, and yet it's very difficult to get businesses to enrol in the program because it's still expected that you come to a job on day one with the fundamental skills like being able to hold a pen properly to write (took me until I was 21 to consistently do it without pain, but I got there eventually). I've been on both ends of the program now, having signed up my organisation for a new hire, just a few years after I had finished my program. From the business perspective it's 15 minutes of paperwork, you can hire a temp with the money the government gives you so you can have 2 employees for the price of one, and sure it's a bit awkward because one of those employees isn't yet fully able to do the job, but you quickly see improvement because you've got the right professionals involved, and it doesn't matter because if its truly entry into level the temp will have it covered while the disabled employee learns.
This program exists, so within my country specifically I'd argue that's where the ableism comes in. When the financial cost of hiring someone with a longer than average training period is removed, the only other reasons that remain are that you'd rather just hire the easiest person to train and that person is likely able bodied, and I'm not saying that's wrong, that's smart business, so I completely understand why businesses do it. My point I guess is that my current employment status and output of work is proof that people in my situation aren't unemployable because we can't do the work, we're unemployable because we pose an added barrier to training, and therefore we have no edge in a capitalist society.
Even if I was eligible for a good, livable disability pension I would still want to work/volunteer in my same role because it's what it love doing with my time and it fulfils me even without a pay cheque, but that still wouldn't be an option for me without access to OT programs today learn through skills I need (I'm not eligible for a pension, in my country if you can work more than 8 hours a week you can't claim a disability pension. I can work 10-12 hours, so I can't claim)
i consider both of these to be some form of social support to be honest.
the rest of the post i pretty much agree with. As you said it's not a competency problem (although technically it is in terms of the hiring procedure) it's a training latency problem. Even beyond that point, there are a lot of people with physical disability who can do various different kinds of work. Physical disability is rather broad as defined, so it could include someone with an amputated limb for example. While that's not going to help, it's most certainly not going to kill their job prospects, unless they're a trained pianist or something. That might pose a problem.
I think the conceptual meaning of ableism is just, weird. For one thing it could very easily be implied that different people are "differently" able, which could be construed to mean that black people aren't smart enough to work office jobs (to pull a historically relevant example) the other implication is better, i can't really think of any exact definition that would pin down this phenomenon in such a way that i would be comfortable referring to a specific thing as "ableist"
I think the closest that you might get is incredibly bad accessibility design, stairs for someone in a wheelchair, for example. I guess to me ableism is more of a passive thing, than an active thing. Not hiring someone based on disability would either be discriminatory or just good ole capitalism in my eyes depending on the situation.
You might be able to use ableist to broadly describe aspects of society, but i feel like that's going to be really uncharted territory and i don't really want to go there.
I guess ultimately i just think discrimination is more than suited in like 95% of cases here lol.
TIL putting stuff in boxes is skilled labor but flipping burgers isn't.
/Eyeroll
Yeah, the "skilled labor" is when the script slipped.
Man, if you have to be a dick to people on the internet to feel special I don't know what to tell you.
I think the skilled labour guy is using sarcasm, and the rest of the internet is not picking up on it.
All Labor is skilled Labor.
No. "Skilled labour" means that you're hiring someone because of a skill or training they already have.
A carpenter is skilled labour because you expect a carpenter to already be able to work with wood. Your not going to train them from scratch on the job. They'll already have served as an apprentice or been trained in some other way.
A fork lift driver would need to have a license before you hired them. Skilled labour.
Somebody packing boxes or flipping burger is "unskilled labour". On day 1 you'll be taught the job. There will be no prerequisite skills needed. It doesn't mean "there's no skill in this job", just that "there is no requirement to have a skill to apply this job".
They get taught the job, making them... skilled?
A carpenter gets an apprenticeship for 2-3 years where they get taught the job, does that make it unskilled as well?
Some jobs are easier to learn than others, that doesn't mean they're easier or worth less, or require no skills.
It makes the apprenticeship an "unskilled" hire, but afterwards they'd be a "skilled" hire for any carpentry job.
The term just means "Is there some required experience for this job on day 1?" not "Does this job require skill to do it well" because that's true of all jobs.
I sit at a desk at home, send emails, and make calls and get paid comparatively handsomely - these people have to stand over searing hot griddles, deep friers, and industrial equipment, risking serious injury at any moment for (close to) minimum wage. Doesn't seem right to me.
They tie their confidence and self worth to their pay rate. They don't want to think they are the same as a fast food worker.
By the way, fast food work sucks. Thats why noone wants to do it. Its not easy to work a shit job. Hard work is hard work either way.
The difference in pay is easier to understand if we keep the time increments the same:
Dude: $16/hr
Bezos: $9,000,000/hr
Bezos makes 562,500 times as much.
Edit: added a missing zero
I agree with your point, but I'm struggling with your numbers... Is it $9,000.00/hr or $900,000/HR?
Editting myself to add: either is a horrific amount for one man to earn
If we take the 150,000 / min from the meme as given, then that's 9,000,000 / h. That also gels with the factor of 562,500. I think friend_of_satan just dropped a 0 there.
Stratification Economics- that's the term for it. It's such a bizarre and fucked up thing that humans would rather make sure their relative status is better to another group rather than objectively imroved overall.
"Why aren't the rich people being allowed to hurt other workers more than me? What do you mean those other workers are standing up for themselves? I am very mad about this!"
I've said it before .. and I'll say it again.
I rather a dude handling my food get paid better than someone touching cardboard.
No balls on my food is preferred over no balls on my Amazon packages.
But really fudge all that. Eat the rich!
Either way it's Labor and the profit should be shared with the person doing the work. Sure it took Capital and risk to set the whole thing up, there's costs involved with running the warehouse, etc. So I'd course it's not split. But the dildo at the top shouldn't be taking the Lion's share.
There's no risk to the capital class. They do not risk their livelihoods, they barely risk their next yacht. The only people that share risk are the working class, not the owners.
To the point a small business entrepreneur is risking their life savings, they risk no more than a worker since they can always get a job. The bankruptcy courts will not make them homeless, will not take their last car, and will not starve them. They make it seem like failure is death itself, but no, it's just back to being a worker.
the risk is primarily shifted towards the beginning of the businesses lifetime, later it can only really be hampered by skill issues and aggressive competition forcing you out of business. Think boeing. Or any number of companies that just, no longer exist.
Once you get to a certain size, it's really hard to fail unless the world literally changes, or the government kills you or something silly like that.
I would generally disagree with the statement that the working class is the one sharing the risk. Unless you mean some weird tangential thing, like being let go because the company fails, but that should be an obvious risk, i would think. There are a few exceptions, nortel being the only real prominent one i can think of. And that's mostly because they all got fucked over, not because it was risky, so that shouldn't have even happened.
Failing as an entrepreneur doesnt mean financial ruin, it means you have to get a regular job, just like the rest of the people that work for you.
The working class sharing the risk part is about when the owner class makes decisions that go poorly, the working class is pushed to make up the difference or they are downsized. The owner class doesnt bear the risks of their mistakes in any way other than financially.
failing is more complicated than this though. I've thought a lot about it. For an entirely online business, maybe. But if you have any sort of physical product, clothing as a simple example. Unless you're literally drop shipping/middle-manning this shit you have a significant infrastructure and capital investment/cost.
For one thing you need the capability and knowledge to be able to design and manufacture clothing. You need to be able to market it, you need to be able to test it and refine it, you need to be able to optimze the design so it can be produced easily. You need to spend time making product, packing product, inventorying that product, and eventually, shipping that product.
Sure you can pay other people to do this for you, but that's not how this works. You probably have to rent some sort of commercial space, or lease it. You need to outfit that space to work for your needs, you need to hire people to work for you, and you need those people to operate as an extension of you so they can operate most effectively, which requires both a lot of training and upkeep in terms of informational knowledge. You still need to deal with marketing, inventory, and shipping as well, that never goes away. You might continue doing design, you might do collaborative design now. And i haven't even mentioned tax or regulations and laws around this kind of stuff yet.
and if the business fails, you still have all of these assets, all of which you have to deal with, product being the worst asset, because it's effectively valueless. The assets you own in terms of equipment and materials might have some base value, but it's not much. If you have a lease that's going to be a bit of a nightmare to deal with. Not to mention the time and skill investment made into this business as well.
if you put all of these things together, and some arguably irresponsible financials this could very well spell financial ruin for a company and it's owner. Especially for small businesses, small business owners tend to be some of the most charitable business owners out there.
IDK why you keep saying they just have to go get a job, that's completely irrelevant here, considering that that was literally the risk to begin with. And you're ignoring all of the previously mentioned context as well. Seems like a downplay of the risk present.
sort of? It's not really shared risk, in some senses it is, because you might single-handedly bring down a small business if you really fuck something up, but just dont do that. You might be pushed to work more hours, or do more things, but i'm not sure what the legal basis is for that, and most of that would be done entirely on the working individuals side. Obviously working at a small company there is always the risk that the company goes under, but that's true for every company, and every job. People who work in trades/commission based fields will tell you this. People that do freelance will lament about this fact. It's nothing new.
Also to be clear, it's not explicitly capital investment, capital is the primary risk, but you also risk losing/wasting time, and knowledge as well.
and regardless, this is a different risk. The workers aren't risking their personal capital or investor capital on something. Their investing time and energy into a thing they believe in, in return for money. If that stops, they can "go get another job" as you said. They have quite a bit more flexibility here than the business owner. Since they don't have responsibility for any of these assets.
i would also like to point out, that in the term "capitalism" is the term capital, which means money. How else are they going to bear that? Emotionally?
I didnt mean to imply every business or situation is the same. Businesses are run as differently as there are opinions online, to varying degrees of success. When owners and management share the responsibility of the company with the working class, it can work perfectly fine.
When I say they only bear it financially I mean that literally. Defaulting on a business loan very rarely means losing a home or the means to feed your family. Thats why its accurate to say they just have to go get a job.
There is a difference in how people are treated when they lose their job vs losing their business. Its much harder to argue that losing your job is a good thing but plenty of people accept that business owners will fail before getting it "right".
of course. I just guess i don't agree with your fundamental conceptualization of the original statement fully.
Again, i'm just not sure that this is the case. I could argue that if your house burnt down, that you only lost something of financial value, but a lot of people, you probably included would disagree with me on that. I guess if you're strictly talking money, you would only be losing something financial in that aspect. But outside of finance there is plenty to lose.
I also don't really understand the whole "they just have to go get a job thing" couldn't you say the exact same thing about any working class person? Who is arguably in a better position to just "go get a job?" I might not be fully following the chain of logic here, but it feels like you're devaluing the company, while also devaluing the worker, you can't have a valuable company without a valuable worker, so i'm not really sure how your math works out on this one.
If you're just trying to make the point that they're "not royalty" i would agree with you but i'm not sure what the point of that argument would be.
it would make sense to me that people are treated differently in those different scenarios, i feel like this is the difference between losing a daily commuter, and losing a personal project car, for instance. You probably don't care very much about your daily commuter, but if you lost a project car that would hurt a lot more.
Employees that are also working for the company that goes bust are generally going to feel the same way as well as get a similar treatment. It's really only going to be workers at giga companies like amazon that people don't really care about because of how many people they move through the ranks.
are you arguing that it's good to lose a business now? I don't understand the line of reasoning behind this, i mean sure bad businesses won't survive but there are many good ones, that are just struggling. On the point about failing before getting it right, you can argue the same thing as a worker as well. The cost and learning curve isn't as steep though. That's kind of the entire point of the education system.
as for "losing your job is a good thing" this thread is old, so idk where that came from, but economically, as far as the market does, you need movement through any industry. Infinite growth is unsustainable (obviously) and having a static work force is going to greatly devalue some jobs, while incredibly overvaluing others. This is why some jobs are better than others at different times.
I guess you could argue the same for businesses, but that would apply to both businesses failing to meet market demands, and businesses exceeding market demands as well. So that's not applied in-equally or anything.
Everyone forgets the workers are taking a risk too. "Just get a new job" doesn't fly in a recession. It doesn't fly when your new boss engages in tax evasion and fucks up your SS/Medicare. Or you just walk into a buzz saw of toxicity and harassment.
We treat a business going under as a tragedy for the owner, but the workers are out of a paycheck too. And hey the owner can always get a job; no matter how far down they are, the bankruptcy courts will let them keep enough for rent/utilities/bills. So they aren't actually taking anymore risk than their workers.
Real question: is box packing at an Amazon fulfillment center considered "skilled" labor? If so, so is flipping burgers, I would assume. In which case, what exactly is unskilled labor? I thought it was basically any job you can get/do without any degrees, formal prior training, and/or certifications.
As far as I can tell, this is two eminently replaceable, definitionally unskilled laborers hating each other over who is getting fucked over harder.
am I the only one who understood this as the dude claiming the burguers flippers being the skilled labour, as in, trying to show solidarity?
I took it as the total reverse.
That he "doing skilled labor" packing boxes at Amazon is above somebody "flipping burgers" at McDonald's.
If working at McD's can be stereotyped with the phrase "flipping burgers", I propose that packaging things at an Amazon warehouse be called something like... "boxing dildos".
One actually handles food.
yes, you and everybody else, it seems
It's ambiguous, though. They could be complaining about the frycooks making as much as them, or about the frycooks not making as much as them. You'd have to look at what else they posted to see whether they're generally pro-labor or not. Or ask them what they mean by their tweet. Both of which are made difficult by the username being blocked out.
It really isn't ambiguous at all, imo. He's clearly saying flipping burgers isn't skilled labour. Like that's literally what the sentence means, as he's comparing flipping burgers to "skilled labour", which he wouldn't do if he thought "flipping burgers" is "skilled labour".
He says he'll be "damned" if what he says are unskilled worked at McDonald's would be paid as much as him — who identifies as someone doing "skilled labour"
you're right. but I didn't expect everyone to have the opposite impression of what I had at first glance
I love that it's totally ambiguous. Throw in a shot of racism and it really leaves you scratching your head.
Crabs in a bucket
Could be a troll? The only difference is that food service is gross and squishy. Amazon has so automated the box packing that the hardest part is getting zoned out in the monotony and forgetting some critical step before you send the box away.
"Skilled labor" lmao. Look it up and sites like indeed.com call it having a law degree.
Some people dont understand that if the workers own the economy everyone benefits, also it doesn't matter how "skilled" your labor is when you're replaceable.
"skilled labor" btw
mfer works in a warehouse packing boxes.
Last i checked things like construction and welding are considered to be "skilled labor" but apparently i don't know shit lol.