Is the OP not obvious sarcasm? In what world is packing boxes skilled labour when flipping burgers isn’t?
I don’t think it’s too unusual for people to think of their own jobs as super important and complicated and everything else is just simple shit in comparison. Watching someone do something they are trained at (because they do it day-in-day-out) often looks simple … until the moment you try it yourself and realize the amount of concentration you suddenly need and the many questions that pop up for details you didn’t even notice before.
It’s a form of short-sightedness and/or lack of experience. But not uncommon.
It might be a side effect that we are all well of aware of the smallest of details and hidden complexity of what we do as a job/serious-hobby, whilst having a very high level and ultra shallow idea of everything else, hence tending to think about other people’s job that “I could easilly learn do that”.
I’ve learned a number of expert areas over the years in my career and it’s always that which happens for me: I start with the idea that “it should be easy” and about 2 years later I’m keenly aware on just how little I still know about it. Even after being aware of this effect, I still start by significiantly underestimating the true complexity of any new area I’m learning.
It’s the same “underestimating of the complexity of what we don’t know in depth” that’s behind the Dunning-Krugger Effect IMHO.
Packing a box is skilled labor?
No, that’s why temping agencies easily fill warehouse positions
All labour is skilled labor. Unskilled labour was created by capitalists as a flimsy justification for paying people unlivable wages. ANY labour deserves a livable wage. Needing a second job is an injustice.
Now that being said, packing boxes for Amazon is 100% unskilled labour. A machine spits out the box template sheet with creases where the cardboard sheet should be folded to turn it into a box within seconds. Another machine prints the receipt that goes inside, and Another machine spits out an appropriate amount of packing to make sure the product stays in place inside the box. Another machine spits out a calculated amount of tape. Another machine spits out the info sticker that needs to be stuck on the outside. Does this need a lot of skill or training? I don’t think so, no.
Technically neither are since they don’t require a recognised qualification to be eligible to apply.
I mean… Just as logically though, they both are… Any shit takes practice to get good at really.
That’s not what the term means though. These are actual, real terms, that denote the amount of qualification needed to do a job.
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McDonald’s definitely don’t care if their employees are effective or not. And they don’t reward effectiveness so what’s the point in trying.
If McDonalds didn’t care about effectiveness they wouldn’t be a household name, let alone an international corporation. People talk down about fast food, but it isn’t their business strategies that are bad.
I think the problem is that people don’t get paid enough to care anymore. Not even the managers. There’s too much wealth hoarding at the top in the US.
“Skilled labor” lmao.
Beat me to it, that’s like saying my washing dishes and talking to old people for a living is skilled labor
I mean, isn’t it? There’s a reason we have TV shows where we record the CEO fucking up doing the “least skilled” jobs in their organization. It’s easy to film because there’s always another dumbass CEO who doesn’t know what they’re in for.
I work a job where I get to interact with everyone else’s jobs, and I haven’t run into a single one that I could confidently call “unskilled”.
Also, “skilled labour”?
Amazon treat warehouse staff like shit specifically because you ain’t. You will be replaced in a second.
Minimum wage is what most people will be on unless they’ve got something to offer other than desperation to survive.
All these people deserve to make more money.
AND, at the same time
Packing boxes is not skilled labor. It’s not like that shit requires two years of trade school.
Does packing boxes really count as skilled labor? I would have assumed it would be unskilled labor just like the burger flipper.
As a former warehouse worker and shipping clerk, it is 100% unskilled labor. We would sometimes hire temp workers for really busy periods, and it would take about 30 minutes to train them.
Listen bud. Labor is labor. All of it takes some skill. You still had to “train” or teach a skill to the one performing the labor.
Yeah, and as someone who works in QA for a carrier repacking some of those boxes I can tell. Shippers really don’t seem to care that their packages don’t even make it to the shipping phase, let alone through our damn building.
That’s the big lie the right wants you to believe; there’s no such thing as unskilled labor. You have to learn every job you start. Flipping burgers, packing boxes, cleaning, washing dishes, etc all have a learning curve. There is no job you can walk in off the street and start doing without previous knowledge.
fridge temp iq labourer.
This is an example of how capitalists have spent decades manipulating people into thinking their enemy was anyone else except the capitalists.
skilled labor is capitalist propaganda to keep wages low
The reply to that tweet makes a lot of sense and it’s been around for a while. Why doesn’t this change more people’s minds? It changed mine the first time I saw it.
The burgers at McDonalds are flipped by a machine now I thought? They may have replaced those workers?
I think they replaced half the cashiers here, but not at every branch. Do you have machine cooks at your McD?
