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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.
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.
My tech who knows how to take and read basic vital signs, flip granny like a pancake and wash her genitals without giving her an infection, walk her to the bathroom without yanking her IV out or cracking her head on the floor, the basic legal aspects of a psych admission, and the basics of psychosis, mania, etc well enough to briefly counsel a patient on their symptoms and which ones are important enough to notify me about-
-makes 16 an hour. Not that the warehouse worker doesn’t deserve a living wage, but to call that skilled labor, and especially more skilled labor than food service is frankly delusional.
Even my partner who does work in food service knows more than the warehouse worker because he knows the biology and chemistry of food safety and sanitation, prevention of allergen cross contamination, knife / sharps safety, and fire and fire extinguisher classifications and how to put out a grease fire-
-and that was before he got a job in the hospital kitchen where he also learned about specialized medical diets including food and drink thicknesses and consistencies, sodium and carb restrictions, and even safety trays for violent and suicidal patients.
What’s in that warehouse training? How to lift with your knees instead of your back and rotating stock? Storage temperatures? Because food service does all that too. The only thing they might know more about than a food service worker is how to use a forklift, and that’s only if their employer thought they were intelligent and level headed enough to bother training on one, and this post does not evidence those qualities.
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, …
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.
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.
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.
My guy if you can learn the job first day off the street it is unskilled labor
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.
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)
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.
Stephen King taught me that cracking eggs is skilled labor for homeless alcoholic vampire-slaying priests
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.
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
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 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.
It’s a skill. Just a lower skill, as it’s not that hard to learn or become good at 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.
TIL putting stuff in boxes is skilled labor but flipping burgers isn’t.
/Eyeroll
Yes putting shit in a box truly requires specialized skills you dumbass twat waffle.
Learn to fucking stand with your follow workers.
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.
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.
“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!”
deleted by creator
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!
