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?

  • Libb@jlai.lu
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    16 days ago

    Unskilled labor is unskilled not in the sense they don’t have any know-how or value but in the sense of the job itself not require a lot of qualification to be done.

    An experienced manual worker has a lot value to any competent boss hiring them, or then the boss is rather incompetent, but the manual work required to the job is not comparable to, say, the skills required to be able to do brain surgery, or to write some marketing bullshit to convince million people that they need to buy a new car or phone, or that they should elect the most illiterate racist asshole candidate they could ever pick as their president. Those are all ‘skilled’ labor but, here again, that doesn’t mean they have any intrinsic better quality just that they required (a lot) more preparation/learning.

    • naught101@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      So “unqualified labour” might make more sense? Makes you sound like a bit of a wanker saying it, but maybe that’s a good thing.