You must log in or # 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 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.
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!
Crabs in a bucket
Working at McDonald’s fucking sucks. They deserve far more in hazard pay.
“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!”
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.
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.
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.
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.
TIL putting stuff in boxes is skilled labor but flipping burgers isn’t.
/Eyeroll
My guy if you can learn the job first day off the street it is unskilled labor
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.
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, …
And like. We’ve all ordered from amazon. We know how they pack boxes. There’s no skill involved there.
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.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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
Either way it’s Labor and the profit should be shared with the person doing the work. Sure it took Capital and risk to set the whole thing up, there’s costs involved with running the warehouse, etc. So I’d course it’s not split. But the dildo at the top shouldn’t be taking the Lion’s share.
There’s no risk to the capital class. They do not risk their livelihoods, they barely risk their next yacht. The only people that share risk are the working class, not the owners.
There’s no risk to the capital class. They do not risk their livelihoods, they barely risk their next yacht. The only people that share risk are the working class, not the owners.
the risk is primarily shifted towards the beginning of the businesses lifetime, later it can only really be hampered by skill issues and aggressive competition forcing you out of business. Think boeing. Or any number of companies that just, no longer exist.
Once you get to a certain size, it’s really hard to fail unless the world literally changes, or the government kills you or something silly like that.
I would generally disagree with the statement that the working class is the one sharing the risk. Unless you mean some weird tangential thing, like being let go because the company fails, but that should be an obvious risk, i would think. There are a few exceptions, nortel being the only real prominent one i can think of. And that’s mostly because they all got fucked over, not because it was risky, so that shouldn’t have even happened.
Failing as an entrepreneur doesnt mean financial ruin, it means you have to get a regular job, just like the rest of the people that work for you.
The working class sharing the risk part is about when the owner class makes decisions that go poorly, the working class is pushed to make up the difference or they are downsized. The owner class doesnt bear the risks of their mistakes in any way other than financially.
Failing as an entrepreneur doesnt mean financial ruin, it means you have to get a regular job, just like the rest of the people that work for you.
failing is more complicated than this though. I’ve thought a lot about it. For an entirely online business, maybe. But if you have any sort of physical product, clothing as a simple example. Unless you’re literally drop shipping/middle-manning this shit you have a significant infrastructure and capital investment/cost.
For one thing you need the capability and knowledge to be able to design and manufacture clothing. You need to be able to market it, you need to be able to test it and refine it, you need to be able to optimze the design so it can be produced easily. You need to spend time making product, packing product, inventorying that product, and eventually, shipping that product.
Sure you can pay other people to do this for you, but that’s not how this works. You probably have to rent some sort of commercial space, or lease it. You need to outfit that space to work for your needs, you need to hire people to work for you, and you need those people to operate as an extension of you so they can operate most effectively, which requires both a lot of training and upkeep in terms of informational knowledge. You still need to deal with marketing, inventory, and shipping as well, that never goes away. You might continue doing design, you might do collaborative design now. And i haven’t even mentioned tax or regulations and laws around this kind of stuff yet.
and if the business fails, you still have all of these assets, all of which you have to deal with, product being the worst asset, because it’s effectively valueless. The assets you own in terms of equipment and materials might have some base value, but it’s not much. If you have a lease that’s going to be a bit of a nightmare to deal with. Not to mention the time and skill investment made into this business as well.
if you put all of these things together, and some arguably irresponsible financials this could very well spell financial ruin for a company and it’s owner. Especially for small businesses, small business owners tend to be some of the most charitable business owners out there.
IDK why you keep saying they just have to go get a job, that’s completely irrelevant here, considering that that was literally the risk to begin with. And you’re ignoring all of the previously mentioned context as well. Seems like a downplay of the risk present.
The working class sharing the risk part is about when the owner class makes decisions that go poorly, the working class is pushed to make up the difference or they are downsized. The owner class doesnt bear the risks of their mistakes in any way other than financially.
sort of? It’s not really shared risk, in some senses it is, because you might single-handedly bring down a small business if you really fuck something up, but just dont do that. You might be pushed to work more hours, or do more things, but i’m not sure what the legal basis is for that, and most of that would be done entirely on the working individuals side. Obviously working at a small company there is always the risk that the company goes under, but that’s true for every company, and every job. People who work in trades/commission based fields will tell you this. People that do freelance will lament about this fact. It’s nothing new.
Also to be clear, it’s not explicitly capital investment, capital is the primary risk, but you also risk losing/wasting time, and knowledge as well.
and regardless, this is a different risk. The workers aren’t risking their personal capital or investor capital on something. Their investing time and energy into a thing they believe in, in return for money. If that stops, they can “go get another job” as you said. They have quite a bit more flexibility here than the business owner. Since they don’t have responsibility for any of these assets.
The owner class doesnt bear the risks of their mistakes in any way other than financially.
i would also like to point out, that in the term “capitalism” is the term capital, which means money. How else are they going to bear that? Emotionally?
I didnt mean to imply every business or situation is the same. Businesses are run as differently as there are opinions online, to varying degrees of success. When owners and management share the responsibility of the company with the working class, it can work perfectly fine.
When I say they only bear it financially I mean that literally. Defaulting on a business loan very rarely means losing a home or the means to feed your family. Thats why its accurate to say they just have to go get a job.
There is a difference in how people are treated when they lose their job vs losing their business. Its much harder to argue that losing your job is a good thing but plenty of people accept that business owners will fail before getting it “right”.
I didnt mean to imply every business or situation is the same. Businesses are run as differently as there are opinions online, to varying degrees of success. When owners and management share the responsibility of the company with the working class, it can work perfectly fine.
of course. I just guess i don’t agree with your fundamental conceptualization of the original statement fully.
When I say they only bear it financially I mean that literally.
Again, i’m just not sure that this is the case. I could argue that if your house burnt down, that you only lost something of financial value, but a lot of people, you probably included would disagree with me on that. I guess if you’re strictly talking money, you would only be losing something financial in that aspect. But outside of finance there is plenty to lose.
I also don’t really understand the whole “they just have to go get a job thing” couldn’t you say the exact same thing about any working class person? Who is arguably in a better position to just “go get a job?” I might not be fully following the chain of logic here, but it feels like you’re devaluing the company, while also devaluing the worker, you can’t have a valuable company without a valuable worker, so i’m not really sure how your math works out on this one.
If you’re just trying to make the point that they’re “not royalty” i would agree with you but i’m not sure what the point of that argument would be.
There is a difference in how people are treated when they lose their job vs losing their business. Its much harder to argue that losing your job is a good thing but plenty of people accept that business owners will fail before getting it “right”.
it would make sense to me that people are treated differently in those different scenarios, i feel like this is the difference between losing a daily commuter, and losing a personal project car, for instance. You probably don’t care very much about your daily commuter, but if you lost a project car that would hurt a lot more.
Employees that are also working for the company that goes bust are generally going to feel the same way as well as get a similar treatment. It’s really only going to be workers at giga companies like amazon that people don’t really care about because of how many people they move through the ranks.
are you arguing that it’s good to lose a business now? I don’t understand the line of reasoning behind this, i mean sure bad businesses won’t survive but there are many good ones, that are just struggling. On the point about failing before getting it right, you can argue the same thing as a worker as well. The cost and learning curve isn’t as steep though. That’s kind of the entire point of the education system.
as for “losing your job is a good thing” this thread is old, so idk where that came from, but economically, as far as the market does, you need movement through any industry. Infinite growth is unsustainable (obviously) and having a static work force is going to greatly devalue some jobs, while incredibly overvaluing others. This is why some jobs are better than others at different times.
I guess you could argue the same for businesses, but that would apply to both businesses failing to meet market demands, and businesses exceeding market demands as well. So that’s not applied in-equally or anything.
