Most “unskilled labor” is heavily skill dependant. You wouldn’t want a chef, builder or plumber who didn’t know what they were doing. And for production: machinists, mechanics and foremen make or break profit with their skills.
So what’s a better name for these jobs?
Chefs and plumbers are unskilled labour? Where?
Class warfare.
There is no such thing as unskilled labour. All labour requires some amount of skill.
Depends on how you define “skill” I guess. If you can pick a random person of the street and it’s possbile to instruct them to do the job in less then an hour, I’d call it unskilled labour. Like picking fruits, stocking shelfs, etc.
I define skilled as you are hired to do a task.
Well, that just changes the meaning of the word “skilled” to be the same as “hired” which is a bit pointless since we already had a work for that. And now we need a new one … like “no-qualification labour”.
yes, you are hired to do a thing that requires skill. Everything requires skill, if something did not require some level of skill there would be no job.
Again, depends on your definition of skill.
I would not classify the ability to grab, lift or carry as a “skill” in terms of labour. You are hired to do work. But if basically any able-bodied person could do the work, it doesn’t require skill.
Yes but not every job requires years of training and certifications. Skilled labor jobs are those that require years of training and certifications eg plumbers, machinists, doctors, lawyers et al.
It isn’t class warfare to suggest the guy whose job is to empty trash bins is doing unskilled labor as most can do that job.
In discourse I find that skilled mostly means educated. And plumbers, although trained, seemingly don’t typically make the cut.
Few blue collar jobs seem to count at all.
You really nedd to look up the definition of skilled labor
Qualification for being a plumber is 3-4 years in my country.
They very much make the cut in my book.
We have 2-3 years to be accepted into an apprenticeship, but we also don’t use the skilled/unskilled terminology.
My question comes from discussions about economics in media and text books, so it could both be simplified and/or narrowly contextual.
You’ve never worked blue collar jobs have you? Just because we don’t have a degree doesn’t mean we are uneducated.
That is precisely the point.
The term “Unskilled labor” is derogatory, misleading, and commonly used to suppress wages. My question is if there’s something better we can call it to reclaim the power of the word, and break the cycle of abuse?
Yeah I’m confident I could learn to run a cash register pretty dang well in less than a month. No way I’m learning plumbing that quick. Also, I’m confident I could teach myself to run a cash register. If I tried to teach myself plumbing (like, no books, internet, etc) I’d be at pretty high risk of a literal shotshow