this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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Depends what you mean by "unskilled labour". Literally no skills? Yeah that doesn't exist, and is impossible to exist as even the most simple of motor tasks like walking are learned and therefore "skills".
If by "unskilled labour" you mean jobs that require no formal training and your average person could be trained up well enough to not need to be constantly trained/supervised in a week or two? Then there's lots of those. Maybe "low skilled labour" is slightly better but still a bit misleading (you still develop skills and improve in those jobs, it's just you're "good enough" at it in a relatively short period of time).
Because capitalism, when you're easily replaceable it means the employer can shop around more and find people willing you did the job for less so the pay is low. You aren't paid by how hard you work, but by the "value" you bring and how hard it is to find someone else.
The problem is that you aren’t paid by the value you bring. We have to fight tooth and nail to get even a fraction of what we’re worth, even in skilled jobs, and there are many executives that realized that they’re better off instilling fear of firing into people than they are worrying about whether or not someone can be replaced. Hell, most of them don’t even have the barest respect for senior workers and will happily replace them with a less skilled, but also cheaper, worker to save a buck in the short-term.
The concept of supply and demand in jobs has died because we lack the ability to enforce it. It’s completely fucked up. I heard someone say recently that it shouldn’t be a “job market” but a “labour market” and I fully agree. They need us, most executives are just dead-weight with money, so why the fuck do they get to be the beggars and the choosers?
Ultimately, if we were paid based on the value we bring then CEOs wouldn’t be getting millions of dollars of bonuses while laying people off to try to keep their own worthless jobs for just one more quarter. If we were paid based on the value we bring then millions of essential workers would be in a much better position but instead they can’t even get raises that match inflation. Like, if your workplace doesn’t, at the very least, give you an inflation-based adjustment to your salary before ever even getting to a true raise then that place is taking you for a ride.
Do places actually do this? Pay rises in line with inflation first? I've never heard of this :(
Basically never! My roommate’s did, which is super nice to hear, but when I asked my last place they told me “that’s not how inflation works” because they’re dumb as rocks and half as useful.
In reality there’s no “cultural difference” nonsense, it’s just basic math, but most managers and executives are fragile, selfish men who never had to learn how to communicate their feelings or recieve even the lightest, most gentle criticism.
It absolutely should be how inflation works. The cost of everything has gone up, right? That includes the cost of my labour. Or, well, it should.
Precisely. Even in our broken system pay is directly associated with the lifestyle we believe that said job should merit and yet when that lifestyle gets more costly our salaries do not increase. It’s like, it doesn’t work in any fair manner and the way it claims to work is just there as an excuse to slowly erode the dignity of the people who just keep getting poorer each year while never actually doing anything in line with that claim.
I mean I get where you're coming from, but you don't get to set your own worth: your worth--and the worth of anything you try to sell--is only what someone is willing to pay for it. The only way to fix this is regulation and proper care for setting and maintaining wage rules or just cutting the shit and going to a UBI system.
Yea that’s that first bit is exactly the kind of bullshit that gets repeated enough times to make people believe that it’s true but it’s total bullshit just like “just get another job if you don’t like it.” It’s very half-way correct but still missing some major nuance that you admit can be tackled with regulation. I know you’re just repeating a well-worn phrase but it’s entirely rooted in pushing the blame onto individuals to minimize their power.
If the companies can’t afford to give their employees a basic, even somewhat dignified quality of life then that means that the company is not deserving of existence and their leadership is clearly unqualified to handle the situation. If I can’t get more money “just because I want it” then they don’t get to have a company “just because they want it and at the expense of all the people doing the real work”.
Seriously, the very concept of minimum wage is tied to the fact that we do know what a minimum amount to live a dignified life costs. And, just in case, if you plan on saying “but minimum wage wasn’t meant to-“ it was, and it was extremely clear that it was.
I'm not repeating anything, this is how it is:
If a company will pay you X to do a thing, but someone else will do it for X-1, then that company would be stupid not to do it. It is a race to the bottom cost for the same work. We have to regulate that minimum value. The company holds the cards, and that's the whole point of unions and collective bargaining. Of course federal rules like minimum wage, OSHA, child labor laws, and so on supercede even that.
Unfortunately our need to work is inelastic: no money from income means no food, clothing, or shelter. This is why I bring up UBI. Then you really COULD set the value below which you would not work, and also you wouldn't lose the things you need.
As for whether or not companies are deserving, that's a totally different imaginary moral high ground that has nothing to do with the discussion infortunately. As long as companies provide a good or service people will buy, and enough is bought that profit is higher than cost, then they go on existing even if its exploitative. This is what rules are for.
The proposition of goodness and worth, and rules and methods is up to society by way of law.
I’m struggling to figure out why most of what you’ve written to me is coming off as a disagreement despite us both clearly knowing that regulation and UBI are good solutions. It’s like you’re both sides of the argument without the nuance to connect them and it’s just coming off as difficult to follow. Like, what was your intention with your responses?
Remember, all I know about you and the context that is your opinion is a couple paragraphs and a vague trust that you’re sane based on the support of a social safety net.
I think it is mostly that I disagree with the premise that all work people do is inherently worth much more than corpos pay for it, and every job has high inherent value.
It just isn't like that. In the real world there are things that need done that basically any warm body can fill. If that is all a person can do, that sucks. It doesn't make that person less of a person, but it doesn't mean the work is a high calling. People exist who are not skilled and who are not smart and who are not special.
So here is the crux for me:
We as a society gotta take care of our people. All of them. It is the good and just thing to do. That means everybody gets money and gets to eat and live, and a fair and equitable shake at success and happiness. But it doesn't make people special and valuable, or put corpos at moral fault for doing corpo stuff, or elevate the importance of stamp kicking, or any of that. I don't like the kumbayah smoke blowing, but it brings us to the same eventualities I guess.
You lose me when you say that essential workers who do jobs that need less training somehow aren’t creating high value for anyone. Those jobs need to be done, and while a janitor isn’t making a product to be sold that doesn’t mean that without them the company can function properly enough for those do make the product to produce it.
If someone has “taken one for the team” and decided to get into garbage collection then they cannot be reasonably expected to have time to pursue a “higher calling”, and nor should they need to. But imagine if we didn’t have them, or if it paid so poorly that the job couldn’t be done well because frankly no one should put in any good effort for shitty pay. Or how we have culturally decided that, training or no, construction work is something that not very smart people get into. And those people are more likely to have shorter careers dude to the wear and tear on their bodies but their pay does not compensate for that.
A lack of understanding of how indirect value is created, or an inability to consider the fact that someone asked to use up their work hours on something other than a “career” job needs to be able to care for themselves all the same, does not validate poor treatment and a lack of pay.
And oh boy if you want to get into “high calling” nonsense look at the low pay of nurses, family doctors, most architects, junior engineers, etc. It’s all deemed important by the employers to hire someone to do the job and is therefore important enough to pay properly. Just because the degradation of our lives has happened slowly does not make it natural, and no amount of saying “this is the real world” will change that.
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Minimum wage hasn’t increased in decades in North America. Us in Canada got a bit of a bump but ultimately it’s still lagging way behind. When the idea was introduced as policy we could afford it just fine but now each year inflation increases without our paying keepinng up the extra money just fills a billionaires pockets. It wasn’t long ago that a millionaire was seen as the richest person imaginable and now we have multi-billionaires in only a few decades. The money was there and we agreed that everyone deserved to live with dignity and it’s still here just in the pockets of a handful of people.
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Oh, and economies are stronger when there are more small transactions compared to only a few big ones. Giving more of the money to individuals is a recipe for success and taking it away from them is how we are where we are. People are valuable and deserve dignity and even if you hate them and think otherwise it’s still got for stable business and strong, robust economy.
Higher minimum wage and UBI are the answer, and higher calling doesn't mean anything besides doing something someone else cant.
Janitors are important. There is not an argument for removing janitors. If only one in 100 people can be a janitor, then janitors will make an assload of money. If 100 of 100 people can do it, the one that gets the janitor job is the one who will take the least money to do minimum quality work and it won't be much money. That person is not "taking one for the team", they are unable to do anything else that pays more (or they will do that) or they just love janitoring, and they were willing to take the lowest amount of money.
You are, again, mixing morality into commerce: the value of a thing or a job is identically what someone will pay/accept for it (which, considering above comments, includes collective bargaining and so on). It's not a matter of "think of their human worth / think of their bodies / the world would be so much worse if nobody did that job!". Those are all important considerations, but that's for society and law to decide.
Worth and value are not the same (even if they should be): one is set by the market and one is set by us as people. If the market says your worth is low, well, right now youre hosed and it might even be your fault. Your argument appears to me to be that worth and value MUST be the same or the market is evil, and it isn't the fault of the market. GOTO paragraph 1 lol.
Edit: oh, to go full circle, IMO the skilled vs unskilled labor discussion speaks to the "worth" or what the market will pay for a job.
Thanks this was all really helpful to write out for thought organization.
Exec summary:
Jobs have value assigned by society. People have value and that raises the value of even the lowest of jobs to this value. This is the origin of minimum wage and starting point for UBI.
Jobs also have a worth assigned by the market. This actual dollar amount is what supply and demand (and collective bargaining AND ALSO the cruelty of needing individual income to live). Jobs with a high supply of candidates usually don't require deep training and are termed (unfairly perhaps) "unskilled", and those with a low supply of candidates usually DO require deep training are termed "skilled". It may be time to change these names.
I'm a perfect world, worth in the market reflects value to society. It's up to us to make that happen.
Yeah, I'd argue 'unskilled labour' or 'low skilled labour' doesn't necessarily mean you should be paid poverty wages.
Imo that's a regulation/policy issue, not a capitalism issue, but I'm happy for someone to talk me through why that isn't the case.
Draw all the academic distinctions you like.
There is no such thing as unskilled labor.
Face up to the fact.
Don’t muzzle the oxen who is treading your grain. It’s the least you can do after taking his balls.
That's the point, the myth is always about "unskilled labour" and that's specifically what pro-capitalist people believe - that low skill is the same as unskilled and low wages workers are "unskilled" and that's why they deserve to stay where they are because they are brainless. And I am obviously above that, so you better not raise the lowest wages to the same as my level, it would be an insult to my skills that I totally have and they don't. That is specifically the message and the brainwashing.
It's supply and demand. If there are only a few of a thing, we pay more for it, if there are a lot of a thing then we (mostly) buy what is cheapest. This is the labor equivalent. There are people who will go out of their way to not buy the cheapest thing if it comes from Walmart or Amazon or whatever. Living wages are basically this (instead of hiring undocumented workers for pennies on the dollar) and it is always a good idea.
Leaving aside the metaphor, you can raise the wages as high as you like, but someone has to be willing to pay for it. If you mandate that every cashier must make at least $40 per hour, those jobs will be automated out of existence. It is really better IMO to start with universal basic income and go from there. Them if you don't have any particular marketable service you can provide, at least you still get to eat and have a place to live.