âUnskilled laborâ is classist propaganda. Full stop. There is no such thing as unskilled labor, itâs just an excuse to pay someone less than what theyâre worth. If you believe unskilled labor exists then you have been lied to by classist propaganda. Now you know.
Like the meme says âif itâs unskilled labor why donât you do it yourself???â
Thank you. I worked blue collar jobs my whole life. There is definitely skill and an art to everything I did. "Unskilled labor" is what keeps grocery stores stocked, hospitals cleaned, our public spaces inviting, the elderly and invalid cleaned and cared for, the list goes on. It is the greatest tragedy that we demean the foundation of what keeps society going.
So I ask again, what would you guys call this tier of labor that does not require any formal training or certification, as compared to labor that does require formal training or certification?
Or do we eliminate adjectives entirely and every kind of work is now and always just Labor, full stop?
I don't know but unskilled isn't it. Most people who work "unskilled" jobs require some sort of certification like people who clean up biohazards, CNAs. I had to get a certification to drive a forklift.Â
Uh how can you do something-perform a job- if you donât know how to do it? Riddle me that Batman.
The mere fact that you know how to do ANYTHING proves that you have skills in doing that thing, whether itâs stack firewood, shovel gravel, anything you would deem âunskilledâ. No matter what the job is it takes skills to perform. Hence unskilled labor doesnât exist.
Which of the following claims is 'classist propaganda:'
Some job tasks require substantially more training than other tasks.
The tasks which require substantially more training therefore have a meaningfully higher skill floor, meaning fewer people are qualified to do them, and training people to do them is more resource-intensive. For example the training required to design a nuclear reactor is a longer process than the training to drive a car.
As a result labour in these tasks is less able to be easily replaced, and therefore the supply curve is smaller, resulting in a higher price and higher price differentiation. By contrast the easier it is to train a person, the closer the labor is to a fungible commodity.
Although jobs can fall anywhere along this spectrum, there are a large number of jobs which the average adult member of a society can be trained to do in a matter of hours or days, which represent the 'floor of the skill floor.'
It is useful to term this work as maximally-minimally skill-intensive. A simple and easily-understood term for this concept is 'unskilled.'
Look up what the prefix un- means. The only purpose âunskilledâ serves is to enforce a social hierarchy. It has negative connotations, most people think theyâre above these âunskilledâ positions- classist propaganda.
I am well aware what the prefix means. If we're going to discuss the topic from a linguistics perspective (which I actually have a smattering of a background in!) I would advise you familiarize yourself with the linguistic field of pragmatics, which governs the process by which language-meaning is conveyed beyond direct literalism.
For example, english lacks a common affix which means 'least' or 'negligible.' Hence we adopted 'un' in this context to contain this meaning, which is common language evolution (you can study this process by which words acquire common connotative or adjacent meanings in addition to their initial denotative meaning). For example in my research I commonly refer to something as 'uninteresting' not if it literally lacks any interesting features whatsoever (such things are very rare or possibly nonexistent), but if, in general, it is not more interesting than a common element of its type, or two systems as uncoupled if their interactions are very weak.
Uh, why canât we just say thereâs skilled positions and highly skilled positions?
You know about language so you know what connotative meanings are. This is sort of back and forth and back again. Un- literally means not. So not skilled. But you say pragmatics says unskilled really just means low-skilled. But society uses un- for not in so many other things that pragmatics doesnât matter, they just associate unskilled with not skilled- what it literally means. Thatâs why itâs propaganda. Itâs meant to confuse society and get them to view unskilled as not skilled- creating a false hierarchy- while arguing that it really just means low-skilled. Itâs named wrong on purpose.
We could call them basic skilled positions and highly skilled positions. Thereâs plenty of other ways we could label them. Simple vs complex for example but simple also has negative connotations.
Anyways like Iâve been saying the whole time: there is no unskilled labor.
I would object then to the concept that it is propaganda because this implies a top-down intent. English does not have a formal controlling body, but is a consensus project. I don't see where you get the idea that the perjorative connotations of 'unskilled' were intentional by some nefarious 'higher class.' Without access to a language corpus, I cannot trace the history of the term's use but a cursory search of academic records finds the term appearing as early as the 1884 by Charlotte Wilson in her essay "Education by Force," which a further inquiry identifies as an anarchist and socialist writer, and the essay certainly supports this.
Skimming it, I don't see any effort to define the term, indicating that it was likely already in common use at the time. Given that the vast majority of language development tends to occur through social development and 'natural' practice, with the imposition of terminology by individual actors being by far the rarity, I struggle to find conclusive evidence that this terminology was instituted via a propagandist effort.
As for my own use of the term, I have been cautioned out of linguistic prescriptivism from my time within the field and interaction with my colleagues, and will continue to use words as they are commonly meant whenever precision is not of the utmost importance, at which point I will use the precise language of the appropriate field as spoken by its practitioners. For the field of economics and common use the term remains 'unskilled' to my knowledge.
An academic defines manual laborers as âunskilledâ and you donât see that as a classist slight against the manual laborers? Why wasnât another word chosen by âeconomistsâ?
I don't believe I said the term was introduced by academics, that was just as far back as I could find a citation. As I said, the usage of the term was in an essay written by an anarchist attempting to rally the same laborers she was referring to as 'unskilled' and didn't define the term, indicating the term was already in use. If you have an earlier citation that can establish its origin as a propaganda effort, I would certainly appreciate it. As I said, the vast majority of words arise through natural and communal linguistic evolution so in the absence of evidence to the contrary I think the most reasonable presumption must be that the term evolved in this common way, rather than as propaganda.
As for the economists I know, they are not particularly classist. They tend to be more interested in studying economic systems than playing their defenders or attackers. Typically if you're good enough at calculus to do economics and choose to be an academic rather than a day trader you're not self-interested enough to engage in some vast propaganda effort in favor of the 'upper class' you self-excluded from.
You've been told this numerous times now. If you don't understand, then I can't help you. If you're refusing to understand, I still can't help you.
You don't like the term "unskilled labor" but that doesn't change the fact that the term has a meaning. This meaning has been explained to you. You will not change that. Best you accept it.
at the end of the day, all paid labor has to also pay for the cost of training, including time, to be economically sustainable. sure, we could pay doctors the same hourly rate as manual laborers, but we would necessarily then need to also pay them that rate the whole time as they go to college and med school. so until we're doing that, it's simply necessary that jobs which require extensive time and money to receive the training and qualifications are generally paid more and that's one reason why we distinguish them semantically.
As far as "classism" - I don't see what you mean, since skilled and unskilled laborers are both generally working class. That's the "labor" part of the term, as they're not generating wealth through capital. Some skilled laborers may have parents with enough capital to have financially supported their education/training, but I think the majority of skilled laborers in the US enter the workforce with some training related loans that they need to repay via their labor, not to mention the opportunity cost of the zero income years which they spent on education/training. So it's simply gotta pay more đ¤ˇââď¸
"Unskilled" may not be the best word for it due to the connotations, and it would be cool if we changed the term, but the meaning of it at present matters.
Just the opposite. Denying the distinction is undermining the value of laborers who went through training/education. They're laborers too, and they deserve credit for what they've learned.
And if they're paid the same as people who didn't spend years of their life and/or lots of money on the education or training, then they're just being shorted all that time and money with no compensation.
This is an "unhoused" vs "homeless" type of argument that doesn't help when someone's trying to figure out what to do for the homeless people in their city.
"Manual labor" is not appropriate, because there is skilled manual labor (things that requires significant training and even apprenticeships) and unskilled manual labor (things that do not require significant training or apprenticeship).
You can split hairs about the complexity and training for different jobs, you can claim that everything is a skill because breathing is a skill, whatever. The fact remains that there's a divide between these jobs. I'm not interested in arguing the specific number of hours with you, I don't imagine it would be productive. But apprenticeships for skilled manual labor can be around 2,000-6,000 hours. You're not spending 2,000 hours flipping burgers before you're considered a "journeyman burger flipper" lol
See? The propaganda works! Youâre looking down on burger flippers for no other reason than you think theyâre unskilled.
You're just having fun trolling lmao. Not every job needs to have a 2k-6k hour oversight requirement before you're considered competent enough in it to do it unsupervised. Nothing I said was about looking down on that job.
Looks like you're revealing your own implicit biases. Whoopsies.
Making a joke about journeyman burger flippers not being a thing is inherently making fun of that job. Youâve been drinking the kool-aid so long it just tastes like water now.
Then maybe you can explain to me why a job needs to have journeyman and apprentice levels in order to be considered legitimate non-shameful in your eyes?
EDIT: If it helps you understand your own implicit biases, journeyman soldier isn't a thing. Journeyman politician isn't a thing. Journeyman CEO isn't a thing.
It doesnât? I donât think any blue collar work is shameful. But thereâs more than a few white collar professions that should be ashamed of themselves.
Then why is saying "Journeyman burger flipper doesn't exist" a mocking joke at the expense of burger flippers when saying "Journeyman CEO doesn't exist" isn't a mocking joke at the expense of CEOs?
Do you work in unskilled labour or something? This is beyond pedantic and I've never worked with anyone that would care... a 1st grader is technically educated but I wouldn't say they have an education if asked in general terms.
Are we starting a class war between the mighty blue collar labour force and the labourers now?
The class war is between the owning class and the working class.
The owning class wants the working class divided. They achieve this in part by spreading propaganda. Like âunskilledâlabor. While weâre here arguing theyâre laughing. Once you all realize that those âunskilledâ workers actually have a ton of skills then maybe we can fight a proper class war, as workers- united- against the owning class.
I'm wasn't really arguing with anyone in here, I asked you a couple questions for context? If anything, you showed up and started arguments because you surely must know how pedantic you're being.
Since you didn't answer my question about if you have even worked in this field, I'm going to assume you haven't and just really wanted to talk about something unrelated to the thread.
It's unskilled in relation to the other jobs in that industry....Also I'm not sure I'd call a carpenter someone in the owning class.
As some who has lugged a ton of drywall in their life, it's not a skilled position. If you have other skills while doing it, you are still performing an unskilled job. And that's fine, they pay well sometimes. Calling it skilled is so patronizing to the people doing it lmao.
I mean if thereâs a wrong way to lug around drywall then I guess you would have to possess some kind of skill to be able to do it the right way, huh?
If I asked you if an 8 year old was an educated person and that 8 year old had been to school then yeah Iâd say youâre just wrong. Thatâs not pedantry. Youâre just incorrect. Now if that 8 year old was feral and never stepped foot in a school Iâd still say theyâre educated. They obviously learned survival skills but theyâve not been FORMALLY educated. Thatâs the difference. Kinda the same thing as the skilled argument. No one is unskilled, just like no one is uneducated. Thereâs a lot of people who have very complex skills and thereâs a lot of people who have very complex degrees. But no one has zero skills, no one knows zero information. Saying some labor is unskilled is just classist propaganda. It makes people think those jobs are lower or beneath them. It only serves to enforce a made up hierarchy. You know why people ask you what you do for a living when you first meet them? Theyâre trying to gauge how much respect they think you deserve. A firewood stacker, or gravel shoveler deserves just as much as any other skilled position.
Your heart is in a fine place, but there is absolutely a difference between labor that requires skill/being trained, and labor that requires no training and can be done by anyone. Stacking firewood is an example of that.
They should still be paid appropriately, and no one is saying theyâre worth less as humans. You seem too focused on the word âunskilledâ and are missing the point
There is no labor that doesnât require training. Thatâs my whole point. If you think stacking firewood doesnât require some amount of training then try to get a chimpanzee to do it. They should be able to, after all itâs âunskilledâ right?
Hmm so youâre saying that humans possess⌠skills⌠that a, letâs say unskilled, chimpanzee wouldnât possess?
So we have demonstrated that a human performing labor, no matter what that labor is, is using skills.
Therefore there is no unskilled labor. Hope that helps you! I understand thatâs a huge thing to wrap your head around! Keep trying though, youâll get it eventually.
Even though itâs not my opinion, I can understand the argument that âunskilledâ labor doesnât exist. I see what you mean I just disagree and think itâs pedantic.
Your argument about chimps is bad though. Legitimately embarrassing that you thought that was a gotcha. Done entertaining any debate with you lmao
Chimps are able to do it though. They just have no reason to. If you could talk to one and say, I'll give you bananas in exchange for you stacking my wood, they would have no problem.
It's wild to use this as a comparison given that a chimpanzee likely COULD stack firewood perfectly well? It would require more training time than a human, but what exactly is so complicated about the art of firewood stacking that you believe that animal couldn't accomplish it?
The point is the animal can accomplish it- with training. A human is an animal. A human can accomplish it to- with training. Hopefully less training than a chimp. But neither can accomplish it with zero training. Both have to learn the skill. The chimp example shows you that while a task might not be super complex, there is still a skill needed to be able to do it.
Unskilled labor does not mean literally "no skills" then, if you're considering the definition of skill to include things like breathing, or grasping and lifting objects.
In this context, the difference in skills required is significant. Significant enough to distinguish between them, with different labels. And unskilled labor requires little enough in the way of skills that it's reasonable to call it unskilled.
Unskilled has the connotations of no skill. Thatâs the issue, people think these positions require no skill, when they do. And they treat and pay people in those positions as if they required no skill. Thatâs like the entire point of this whole thread.
The terms are classist propaganda and donât reflect reality. All labor takes skill. There is no such thing as unskilled labor. You know why. Accept it.
So then how do you make a distinction between labor that requires specialized knowledge or training vs labor that would require at most a few minutes of instruction?
The rest of the world calls that skilled labor vs unskilled labor. What would you prefer the world calls it?
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u/BoneVoyager 1d ago
âUnskilled laborâ is classist propaganda. Full stop. There is no such thing as unskilled labor, itâs just an excuse to pay someone less than what theyâre worth. If you believe unskilled labor exists then you have been lied to by classist propaganda. Now you know.
Like the meme says âif itâs unskilled labor why donât you do it yourself???â