When the term “essential worker” was coined, it made many of the people it applied to feel flattered. They were considered essential! However this is a misunderstanding of what a capitalist is saying. The term “essential” doesn’t actually refer to the worker. They consider the work essential. It is very important that those jobs are carried out. The worker that does it though is irrelevant, and considered fungible.
You know how corporations have a department called “Human Resources?” That’s exactly the mindset. Your job is essential, but you are expendable.
Never heard anyone be flattered when called an essential employee. Mostly they just say “if I’m essential then pay me more.”
A recent Unlearning Economics Live video had Cahal mentioning that it was pretty easy to identify essential workers, and if that’s the case we should earmark housing for those workers in the relevant areas. If it’s been so easy to classify them, there should probably be other similar accomodations (eg tax breaks) from a payment perspective.
Fuck earmark; appropriate from landlords; plenty of empty units.
Just steal 4Head
Well that too, but it doesn’t require legislative change.
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There is no such thing as unskilled labour.
Have you met any of my coworkers?
My coworkers probably say this about me
This is something only doofuses playing semantic games say.
“Unskilled labor” is a term with an established definition: it’s work that you don’t need special schooling or training beforehand to be qualified to be hired to do, and also generally means that someone who is hired to do it can be fully trained to do the work to a satisfactory level within a month.
And you absolutely do get better at the job over time. A seasoned employee doing nearly anything is better at it if they’ve done it a few years.
I work a job that can be taught to most people. Although you do need to be strong and be ok with a lot of travel. General dexterity and familiarity with hand tools helps immensely. I am also a college dropout. I have had very few of my trainees fail to last at least a year. I am so much, almost infinitely better at it than a new hire though.
The other part of my argument here is I coordinate constantly with people who have multiple certifications all the way up to advanced degrees. Every single one of them I’ve spoken to about it says that their work is roughly 90% learned on the job. To me this makes the certifications and degrees they earned 90% worthless, except that education got their foot in the door to actually learn the job.
We need an overhaul in the way we think about qualifications for jobs. I think college education is a wonderful thing that generally creates a more well rounded individual, and I am grateful that I was able to spend a few years doing it. But pushing people into massive debt so they have a chance to get their foot in the door for a better paycheck is fucking insane.
Every single one of them I’ve spoken to about it says that their work is roughly 90% learned on the job. To me this makes the certifications and degrees they earned 90% worthless
This is not sound logic. Those certifications and degrees are the baseline, foundational knowledge that make it possible for the job-specific knowledge to be learned.
To use a simple analogy, you can’t do calculus if you don’t know arithmetic first. But in a calculus class, you learn ‘on the job’ all-new stuff. That doesn’t mean the ‘certification’ of knowing arithmetic is worthless–without knowing arithmetic, it would be impossible for you to learn or do any calculus.
We need an overhaul in the way we think about qualifications for jobs.
This is a self-solving problem. If an employer puts too many or the wrong prerequisites ‘in front’ of a job that doesn’t actually need them, they will deprive themselves of X% of actually-qualified talent and the business will be worse off, versus employers who place only the appropriate (which in some cases, can easily be ‘none’) prerequisite(s) that are actually required for the work.
Of course there is.
There is, but it’s not very common. Probably between 1% - 5% tops.
Lol, ok.
There are jobs where you need to trust people to not abuse their power more than others, though.
Dunno about that.
Easy enough. Set minimum wage for essential workers. (And raise minimum wage.) Declare a holiday for everyone for a month.
Everyone that works is essential.
it would be better to just raise the minimum wage to a living wage and then regulate housing prices. And then tie the minimum wage to the cost of living.
Are we really going to have this discussion again?
Skill is a measure of the amount of worker’s expertise, specialization, wages, and supervisory capacity. Skilled workers are generally more trained, higher paid, and have more responsibilities than unskilled workers.
So you’re saying middle managers are skilled workers? What is their skill? Because as far as I can tell, their main tasks are “motivating the work force” and “keeping everyone on track,” and unless they all have degrees in psychology, I don’t think that’s something they’re likely to have any sort of special skill in, do you?
No, no, no, you misunderstood. Essential doesn’t mean highly paid. They are the suckers who are left doing the dirty work that keeps high society moving but of course they’ll get the lowest possible wage if they can be replaced easily.
We really need to fuck with money. All of these labels are a tool to make as much profit as possible.
Billionaires are going straight to the boiler room of hell for the suffering they caused.
They know where they’re going, they already made their deal.
They don’t care
Maybe that’s why they’re all obsessed with living forever inside of a computer and then putting chips in all our brains?
Could be, they can “save” their souls that way perhaps
But who’s to say that the image of themselves in the computer will actually be them and not only a copy of them?
No one knows yet…
Any time any worker drives past a “heroes work here” banner (which I still see sometimes), they must think “if you believe I’m a hero, pay me better”
I think that’s the idea. Heroes “do it for free”. You don’t see superman getting extra money from saving people. He holds a job. Same with Spiderman. Even Link has to pay rupees for his gear to save the world.
So businesses have figured out if they give you the praise of being a hero, they don’t have to pay you. Just like a superhero would never ask for money, you shouldn’t either, hero.
Let’s not forget the humiliating ritual that is clapping hands for medical professionals and delivery folks during Covid pandemic.
Is roo clutching her pearls?
