You must log in or register to comment.
Real question: is box packing at an Amazon fulfillment center considered “skilled” labor? If so, so is flipping burgers, I would assume. In which case, what exactly is unskilled labor? I thought it was basically any job you can get/do without any degrees, formal prior training, and/or certifications.
As far as I can tell, this is two eminently replaceable, definitionally unskilled laborers hating each other over who is getting fucked over harder.
I’ve said it before … and I’ll say it again.
I rather a dude handling my food get paid better than someone touching cardboard.
No balls on my food is preferred over no balls on my Amazon packages.
But really fudge all that. Eat the rich!
I want Amazon fulfillment center workers to be paid a living wage, but calling some of those jobs “skilled” is stretch.
Don’t blame the worker for results of working conditions they didn’t create.
Amazon is known for micromanaging every aspect of warehouse work, do you really think Amazon lets workers take the time and initiative to select which type of box a thing gets put into? Hell no, all the company cares about is getting shit shipped as fast as possible.
This is a symptom of Amazon’s management, not the fault of any one worker.
The phrase has lost all meaning. People just assume its a personal attack now cause I guess American egos are in decline or something.
Waxing moon or some shit.
Fry Cooks have to take classes on food safety. They are skilled labor. I’m not sure about the Amazon box guy but maybe both should have the trade union you need to be “skilled labor” in the actual sense of it.
Instead of reasonable pay, you’re offered a title and persistent lies about career growth. And it feels pretty shitty when you’re confronted with the fact that you’ve invested a bunch of energy in something that won’t pay off.
Ugh… Dumbasses must’ve been terrible at Tetris.
But seriously, that box took up so much erroneous space on the transporting vehicle, displacing other boxes that had to move to yet more vehicles. The extra emissions from these failed attempts at protecting the item (which is pushed up against the wall of the box, vulnerable anyways), is sad.
My guy if you can learn the job first day off the street it is unskilled labor
Stephen King taught me that cracking eggs is skilled labor for homeless alcoholic vampire-slaying priests
Which is why the very idea of “unskilled labour” is ableist.
I had to work with an occupational therapist for 2 weeks to learn how to wash my dishes at home without having injuries or breaking my dishes. I could not have walked into a job as a fry cook just because it’s entry level and “unskilled”. I’d need to learn some skills first.
There’s no such thing as unskilled labour for me personally, because any labour requires skill when your body or mind is disabled.
Did it take 4 years of school and another year or two on the job training to get proficient? There is such a thing as unskilled labor even if you personally have to work harder at it due to the cards you’ve been dealt.
I thankfully haven’t had to do physical therapy, but from what I hear, it’s painful and no fun if you’re doing it right…hope your dishes are getting easier, friend.
Painful, generally (but it shouldn’t be agonizing barring other health issues) and no fun really depends on the physical therapist.
The guy I went to was very nice and had 4 patients at a time in the big room, and everyone just talked to him, one another, or just worked on sets. It was actually quite pleasant to just do sets and listen to people talk about the best way to do a crab boil!
Which is why the very idea of “unskilled labour” is ableist.
they don’t exactly call it capable labor or anything.
They call it unskilled labor for a reason. It’s generally not complicated and not very hard.
Naturally being disabled makes things harder, but idk what you want me to do about that one. People with physical disabilities and the capability of doing labor don’t generally go together.
People with physical disabilities and the capability of doing labor don’t generally go together.
And yet we’re given no other means to ensure our survival other than to try to labour for a chance to earn a living.
i don’t disagree, but that’s a different problem. I don’t think this is an ableist problem, i think this is probably more of a social service problem more than anything.
TIL putting stuff in boxes is skilled labor but flipping burgers isn’t.
/Eyeroll
Crabs in a bucket
Yes putting shit in a box truly requires specialized skills you dumbass twat waffle.
Learn to fucking stand with your follow workers.
I sit at a desk at home, send emails, and make calls and get paid comparatively handsomely - these people have to stand over searing hot griddles, deep friers, and industrial equipment, risking serious injury at any moment for (close to) minimum wage. Doesn’t seem right to me.
They tie their confidence and self worth to their pay rate. They don’t want to think they are the same as a fast food worker.
By the way, fast food work sucks. Thats why noone wants to do it. Its not easy to work a shit job. Hard work is hard work either way.
lol packing boxes at Amazon being skilled labor in comparison to the burger dudes. Like, my dude, you’re about half a step above the dude putting a burger together then packing a bag with it, and I’m being generous.
Packing a box seems easier than operating the machines at mcdos. Timing the operation, consistency, time pressure, angry clients, …
You need a permit to handle food.
Was literally going to say… there’s more regulations/certifications in food prep, both for the business itself and the workers, than a lot of other jobs.
And like. We’ve all ordered from amazon. We know how they pack boxes. There’s no skill involved there.
That right there is why I’m hoping the xeet was sarcasm tbh.
Lmao
Packs boxes at Amazon; believes he is skilled labor and fast food workers aren’t.
Buddy, you’re closer to being replaced by a machine than the burger flipper.
Them believing that they are skilled labor tells you all about the value of their opinion.
Flipping burgers and packing boxes are both skilled labour. There’s no such thing as unskilled labour.
It might be better to call it low skill or something like that. The point is that there are jobs that can quickly be taught on the fly and have you productive in a few days, and that this is different from jobs that may require years of potentially highly specialized training. Working in a McDonalds Kitchen and in an Amazon warehouse are both much closer to the former than to the later.
The point is: While some difference in pay might be justifiable (to compensate for the lack of income during the time it took highly skilled laborers to get their skill and as part of a system of incentives to encourage people to pursue these careers), the magnitude of that difference in most places is very much not!
A full-time job should pay a wage from which a family can live. Doesn’t have to be great and doesn’t have to come with yearly vacations abroad, but it has to be enough for food, shelter, transportation and some entertainment. The problem is that we are very much not at that point any more. (Though this even extends to a lot of jobs that do require year-long training…)
One can imagine just walking in blind and getting an order to do X of something right now without any guidance.
Drag doesn’t know how to make a big mac. Drag doesn’t know the procedure for packing an Amazon box. Drag doesn’t know how to turn on the stove or where to find the tape. And drag sure couldn’t do it as fast as the pros, even with instruction.
Drag is here to take your orders and ruin them in 3-5 business days.
You should visit my local mcd then, you’d change your opinion of unskilled not existing. Patty has to go between the buns? Nah. Forgot the cheese? Just throw it on cold and go. Order has to be remotely correct? Nah, custom orders get ignored. Fries have to have more rigidity than a 94 year old’s boner? Nah, in fact here is some extra grease just seeping into everything from the fry box. Drink machine broken, everyone gets sprite, no refunds. We ran out of patties 4h before closing, are undercooked chicken nuggets okay?
Like I get mcd locations are usually franchised but holy fuck, when I pay $12 for a big mac meal and it looks and tastes like a vegetarian 4 year old built it, we have issues. A decade ago it cost $6 and was at least kind of decent food… Now it’s just ass all-around.
Drag thinks you have discovered through personal experience which skills are required to be a good fry cook.
I think a better word would be common skilled labour instead of unskilled labour.
The whole idea is it’s a skill that the majority can pick up, then people used it to mean it’s worthless…
OK, so what skill is needed to put Box A into Box B where Box B is three times the size of Box A?
What does the training involve?
Are there really people out there who can’t do that (excluding reasons like physical disability)?
Drag doesn’t know what the legal and organisational standards are on the amount of packing material to cushion fragile items, or what kinds of tape need to be used.
You can rank anything, and piling boxes such that they don’t fall over and kill someone is more dangerous with more expertise than cooking McDonald’s burgers for 2min then doing it again.
The risk of food poisoning is at least equal to your proposed danger stack.
Aircraft engineers and mechanics used to be considered unskilled labor until the 1950s. They were only “reclassified” during the Cold War because there weren’t enough people going into the profession to keep up with the demand.
My tech who knows how to take and read basic vital signs, flip granny like a pancake and wash her genitals without giving her an infection, walk her to the bathroom without yanking her IV out or cracking her head on the floor, the basic legal aspects of a psych admission, and the basics of psychosis, mania, etc well enough to briefly counsel a patient on their symptoms and which ones are important enough to notify me about-
-makes 16 an hour. Not that the warehouse worker doesn’t deserve a living wage, but to call that skilled labor, and especially more skilled labor than food service is frankly delusional.
Even my partner who does work in food service knows more than the warehouse worker because he knows the biology and chemistry of food safety and sanitation, prevention of allergen cross contamination, knife / sharps safety, and fire and fire extinguisher classifications and how to put out a grease fire-
-and that was before he got a job in the hospital kitchen where he also learned about specialized medical diets including food and drink thicknesses and consistencies, sodium and carb restrictions, and even safety trays for violent and suicidal patients.
What’s in that warehouse training? How to lift with your knees instead of your back and rotating stock? Storage temperatures? Because food service does all that too. The only thing they might know more about than a food service worker is how to use a forklift, and that’s only if their employer thought they were intelligent and level headed enough to bother training on one, and this post does not evidence those qualities.
Yeah, that’s why I’m convinced it’s satire until I see more tweets.
Stratification Economics- that’s the term for it. It’s such a bizarre and fucked up thing that humans would rather make sure their relative status is better to another group rather than objectively imroved overall.
I think we’re all missing the point here, and this is how they divide us. (By they I mean monied interests). Back in the 60s you could get a job air hammering in the same 8 bolts all day that would provide you a house, car, and your spouse doesn’t work and you have 2 kids and go on vacation twice a year and the company takes care of your retirement. Both of these jobs (in ops post) require the same or more skill to do and you can’t even afford to rent a studio apartment on your own. We need to stop looking at other “unskilled” labor and saying “they better not make a much as me” and start asking “hold on, why can’t we both make more?” Rising tides lift all ships. The only people that suffer are the multi millionaires.
This isnt radical. If you work full time you should be able to afford what your parents and grandparents had in the 60s working full time.
Honest labor is honest labor, whatever it’s moping the floor or engineering new bridges and rockets. We need each other. And we all want to have a sufficient amount of these funny play-money papers once we clock out for today, or, rather, not feeling limited by the lack of them up to the point of starvation.
Exactly 💯.
It’s getting to the point that just renting an illegal basement “apartment” requires 2 incomes in some places… I make $30/hr and almost half my income goes to this shit garage apartment I live in… Forget “legitimate” apartments, those prices are just absolute insanity.
Without looking at “professional” college degree required jobs, the VAST majority of jobs out there pay barely over $20/hr where I am… Where are you going to live on that kind of garbage?
I cannot stand the focus on “family income.” It completely ignores the experience of the individual and lumps multiple incomes together to try to claim that people are doing well… Yeah well fuck me for being undesirable and permanently single.
Yeah well fuck me for being undesirable and permanently single.
woe is you, even more fucked are the people who don’t want to be living in a multi person household. Let alone living with a partner.
(this comment is mostly a shitpost, i just think you phrased that part weird, dont mind me)
Crab ass mentality. You should be asking why you get paid so little not keeping everyone else down
And the fast food shit is probably about as skilled as packing Amazon boxes the fuck you on about
Bro, I went to college and got a degree in packinology. Not everyone is qualified to use scotch tape and bubble wrap. You know how many people die every year choking on packing peanuts?
A brain sturgeon ain’t got shit on me.
“Why aren’t the rich people being allowed to hurt other workers more than me? What do you mean those other workers are standing up for themselves? I am very mad about this!”
“Everything is going as planned. The propaganda will continue. Capitalism. 'Murica.”
I hate to break it to that guy but packing boxes isn’t skilled labor either.
All labour is skilled labour. If you have to be trained how to do something it’s a skill.
You think packing boxes is just putting things in boxes but I’m sure there is more to it, particularly when working for dystopian Amazon where they’re very strict with KPIs.
People called it unskilled labour as a means to pay people less.
All labour is skilled labour. If you have to be trained how to do something it’s a skill.
semantically sure, but im pretty sure the implication is that it’s a heavily skill based field, something that you can’t just show up and start doing. As the term skilled labor would imply.
Would you consider someone who just learned chess to be a “skilled player” or would you consider someone who has quite the substantial knowledge of chess, and the ability to play very competently a “skilled player”
I would consider they had different levels of skills. A skill level if you will.
i don’t disagree with you, but the point that i’m making here is that a high level chess player, would be a skilled chess player. A novice who just started last week, isn’t going to be a skilled chess player either, they’re going to be an amateur/novice player.
Same can be said for skilled labor, it’s a specific type of labor that requires training and as you’ve said, a very specific skill set to be utilized.
Given the size of the boxes my Amazon stuff comes in you’d have to be extremely challenged not to be able to get that stuff in there. They’re not exactly solving the Knapsack Packing Problem multiple times a day.
My understanding is some algorithm decides what size box to use for an order, the packer packs that box.
The skill comes from the repetition of doing the task to become efficient enough not to be taken out back and put down by Bezos.
The skill comes from the repetition of doing the task to become efficient enough not to be taken out back and put down by Bezos.
i would consider this being abused, not being skilled but ok
Eh. If you can replace someone with practically any able bodied person off the street and a week of training, it’s not skilled labor.
Can you technically argue that 1 week of training equates to becoming “skilled”? Sure, but it’s a dumb line to draw IMO.
It’s dumb to draw any sort of line.
I think it fits the dictionary definition. Don’t you?
skill /skĭl/
noun
-
Proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience.
“painted with great skill.”
-
A developed talent or ability.
“improved his writing skills.”
-
An art, trade, or technique, particularly one requiring use of the hands or body.
“the skill of glassmaking.”
-
If anything, I’d claim that burger flipping requires more skill than item boxing.
It’s a skill. Just a lower skill, as it’s not that hard to learn or become good at it.
Yeah and that’s what “skilled labor” means. It is about people with higher skills required for their job, skills that are in high demand. There is a huge difference between a doctor, programmer, CAD designer, and a cashier.
