unions

Every fucking time:

It's a distinction between "on-the-job training will suffice" and "no chance without years of prep."

No shit anything worth paying a human for involves human skills. But some jobs are open to just about anyone who can put up with it, and some jobs kill people when you try to muscle through on sticktoitiveness. A fast food restaurant can bring some rando up-to-speed in a couple weeks. An ER cannot. The distinction is necessary.

Nitpicking the label misses the point:

All labor deserves a living wage.

It doesn't fucking matter how difficult or complex a job is. If your business wants people's time - you had better fucking pay them enough to be there next month. Otherwise, you don't get to be a business.

It just means "no prior knowledge required". It's not a myth lol

I think unskilled there just implies no prerequisite knowledge required

The term being changed to mean something else by whoever is writing these articles is the real crime; how do you not understand what unskilled labor means? Changing the term isn't going to earn you better compensation for something that doesn't require formal or specialized education. Get over it.

Does the label even matter?

When lots of people would do the job, and many even for less than you, why not hire someone else for less?

When you're the only one who qualifies, the situation reverses. Why bless that company with your work, when you can go to someone else who pays more?

Maybe it's all just supply and demand within the limits of regulation.

Poverty wages are paid to workers that are highly fungible.

The concept of unskilled labor refers to tasks that require little or no specialized training or knowledge to perform. This can include manual labor or work that requires very basic skills. In reality, this type of work has existed for centuries, long before capitalism emerged as an economic system. For instance, agricultural work during the feudal era falls under the category of unskilled labor. Even today, there are numerous industries with high demand for such workers, from construction sites to warehouses.

Regarding the claim that unskilled labor is a "capitalist myth," it's important to note that while capitalism does promote a competitive market where businesses strive to minimize their costs (including labor), this concept has existed since the beginning of human civilization. It is not exclusive to capitalism. However, the extent of exploitation and the justification behind poverty wages might have intensified under a capitalist system due to private property rights and the profit motive.

When a business owner hires unskilled labor, they expect these employees to be less productive than those who possess specialized expertise or training. Consequently, businesses tend to pay lower wages to workers who do not contribute significantly to their profits. This notion may seem unfair to some, but it stems from the law of supply and demand. If there's an oversupply of unskilled labor, employers have the upper hand in setting wages at levels that meet their needs. As a result, many workers accept lower wages because they lack alternative employment opportunities.

In summary, the existence of unskilled labor predates capitalism, and its association with poverty wages is not solely due to this economic system. The concept of unskilled labor reflects tasks that require little training or knowledge, which can be found across various historical periods and societies. Furthermore, the link between low-paid unskilled labor and capitalism arises from market forces that determine wages based on supply and demand. Thus, calling unskilled labor a "capitalist myth" used to justify poverty wages oversimplifies a complex issue that involves factors beyond the scope of any one economic system.

I have to ask, why are we even working so fucking hard??

What has all of this hard work we've been doing accomplished? Our infrastructure is failing. We're throwing food away. We are wasteful and killing the environment. What has 'hard work as a virtue' gotten us?

Can't we just live our lives??

Farming is "unskilled" labor?

Holy fuck, come to a farm one day. A single day could encompass anything from forensic accounting, roboticist, veterinarian, or heavy duty mechanic.

Idk man my labour is pretty unskilled, I think anyone could do it really (I'm a middle manager)

Yes and no. It’s all about how replaceable you are. If you have a super limited skil and I demand l set like lots of types of engineering, software development, or any other discipline that requires many years of study- I would consider you “skilled”

“Unskilled” roughly translates to “we could teach anyone to do it”. There isn’t a big learning curve to flipping burgers- I’ve flipped plenty myself and it was not a vibe.

They should still be paid a little bong wage either way

One of these things is not like the others.

I respect anybody working a job, especially since ther work environments are almost always worse than mine. However, their qualifications don’t concern me too much. I assume they get the necessary training.

But a bricklayer building my house or office? I think that’s a skilled trade where I want to know more about their experience.

Amazon worker has his dick out. I think he needs more skill first

On the weekends I've been working on a concrete foundation for my new fence...talk about unskilled work. I'm having to scrape every ounce of shit I've ever learned from my dad to skill this wall into existence. It's 90% labor, 10% skill. So that tells you how much this should be paid in comparison to my actual desk job.... okay fine engineering is way more difficult in skill but like 10% labor so we can still equate stuff to stuff.

It boggles the mind that a CEO could earn much more than several to hundreds to thousands of workers do. That's just not right. That's robbery.

It’s also a great tool to keep the slightly less poor turned against the not poor. Oh they don’t have skills, so they don’t DESERVE to get off of welfare when working full time hours.

"Skill" in this sense can be boiled down to "replaceability due to automation." The Industrial Revolution was as much about displacing highly trained, highly skilled craft laborers as it was about increasing raw production numbers. Highly trained craft workers up to that point handled most production of most things that weren't food. To get around paying these folks for their training and skill, industrialists invested in automation so they could replace people who had literally trained for years in that craft with someone who just walked in off the street. Instead of having a team of carpenters who'd trained for years working in concert on every step of a process, you had a series of individual stations on a production line and only needed to train a new hire against their single specific role in the production line, not the whole process. The breaking-up of labor into small steps shared out across teams, in roles that could be trained in weeks or days instead of years, is kind of one of the core techniques of industrial production.

Because of the relatively less training needed to get started on the production line, factory owners were able to drive down wages substantially across the board and displace craft labor. The industrial revolution boosted profits as much by driving wages down as it did by increasing production, and using a hierarchy of "skill" (where the factory owners are constantly trying to replace workers with leverage) to pay workers less was one of the ways it did that.

Anyways, so yeah. There's always been work that's more skilled and less skilled, but the term "skilled labor" sort of derives from this phenomenon during the Industrial Revolution. In that sense, it is totally bullshit meant to drive down wages.

EDIT: Found some snippets on general history sites regarding this process: https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3517

https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/rise-of-industrial-america-1876-1900/work-in-late-19th-century/

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/industrialization-labor-and-life/

A related art movement, the Arts and Crafts movement, which arose as a response to the impact of industrialization on craft labor: https://www.thecollector.com/industrial-revolution-arts-and-crafts/\

EDIT: A word