[xibo9]

"unskilled labor"

What an extremely elitist phrase.

[moooo99]

> What an extremely elitist phrase.

This! I hate when people talk about "unskilled labor" because there is no such thing. There definitely is work that requires less training than other jobs, but there is no such thing as unskilled labor.

[busterarm]

You're certainly glad that your uber driver can't be suddenly promoted to airline pilot though, right?

[busterarm]

It's not elitist. Some skills are effectively commoditized. They don't require specialized, rare knowledge, years of training and constant personal investment.

If you pick a job that literally anyone else can learn to do in a few days, then the cap on your salary and lack of bargaining power is on you.

[foobarian]

I mean, it is elitist. Is that inaccurate? What I don't get is why that is supposed to be bad. It's just a fact.

[totony]

Do you have a better term for it?

[busterarm]

Back in my younger years, I worked a lot of unskilled-labor type jobs.

The starkest difference that I recognize between people in those jobs and people in my career is that in the former people have a hard time showing up to work on-time or at all and in the latter everyone is pretty tuned in and works hard.

It only hit me late in life that success in life really can be just as simple as showing up.

I guess what I would say here is that the kind of people who feel that they need collective bargaining agreements probably overlaps quite strongly with the group of people that have a hard time showing up.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Do you have a better term for it?

Apparently the euphemism treadmill is on low-wage labor [1]. Which is dumb, since it literally though not conceptually covers graduate students.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unskilled-labor.asp

[triceratops]

High-paid/low-paid labor?

[goodpoint]

"labor" and "job"

[noSyncCloud]

More exploited | Less exploited?

[sershe]

Thank you for complimenting the above insightful comment! :)