this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 12 points 8 hours ago

I remember that when Covid was essentially over, and the NYC nurses, who had been absolute heroes during the pandemic, many even giving their lives, asked for an increase in pay. Every hospital in NYC refused.

So they all went on strike, and within 3 days, every hospital have in and gave the nurses EVERYTHING they demanded.

We need to make them FEAR us. Unionize everything, then go on strike, and stay on strike until they give up EVERYTHING.

[–] Phegan@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

If they call you a hero for doing your job, they are asking you to risk your life for capitalism

[–] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

MC Squared is 100% correct. In 1946, the US workers were still being paid the lower WW II wartime wages and it required a general strike to change that.

[–] Realspecialguy@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

This doesnt say what you think it does..

This says that the basic needs of life are not by....... but rather

[–] buttnugget@lemmy.world 12 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

This is why it’s so important to get organized. That’s when they really do acknowledge we’re essential: when we strike and shut down their entire operation and there’s zero revenue coming in. Society cannot function without workers.

[–] tym@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

What year was the radio invented? IMO, radio is "bread and circus 1.0" and we're now up to at least 3.0 with social media. That's all to say they have quite the head start in driving the individualistic dream of celebrity if one complies.

[–] GLOOMSDAY@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I love that you're into a general strike. We need one. Occupy Wall Street was kind of one that worked for a millisecond. I'm more into a Bolsheviks/Romanov family fantasy now.

[–] karashta@piefed.social 59 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The pandemic proved just how stupid and useless most of the jobs we do are and which we actually should all be splitting up our time to do them because they're essential.

We could all be working 15 hours a week in a veritable paradise of enforced abundance and sustainability.

[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

We could even open up a new job type, Billionaire Hunter

[–] TaterTot@piefed.social 15 points 1 day ago

Find a job you love...

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Apparently everyone making less than $20 per hour are essential not everyone else

[–] Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

No such thing as unskill labor. This phrase is pointed to push an image of saturation. If labor took no skill than why does a person need to do it? If it was so autonomous as to need no action at all, then it's simply stagnant. Movement requires control of muscles, a skill learned early in life. A skill that one can loose if injury is sustained by the brain. A skill that can be learned twice if forgotten. A skill, nonetheless. Nothing a human does intentionally is unskilled. All intentional brain activity relies on skill. No matter how base that skill is, by definition, still a skill.

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Playing games with the definition of the word "skill" doesn't change the fact that these categories correctly predict market behavior regardless of the name you give them.

[–] Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more skill /skil/ noun the ability to do something well.

What games am i playing with the definition?

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You're stubbornly refusing to accept that polysemy exists, and as a result are insisting that everyone else use your definition instead of the commonly accepted one.

Which, again, is all completely irrelevant since you can call these "A" and "B" and get exactly the same correct predictions.

[–] TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 3 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

You’re stubbornly refusing to accept that polysemy exists

That's basically every fight with a grammar Nazi on the Internet.

In this case, the guy feels insecure about the whole skilled and unskilled labor issue and acts like its purely artificial distinction and that just meeting the barest definition of skill is sufficient to satisfy it. I just assume these must be the guys who could get perfect A's in class if they really tried / weren't already beyond what they were being taught and school is really useless / had enough money and if the entire world wasn't against them.

Having said that, rewarding skilled labor significantly more than unskilled labor is really double dipping. People who are capable of skilled labor already have benefits at the very least in regards to access to markets other people don't have. Ironically, the same impulse that drives skilled labor to get better benefits and salaries is the same impulse that people seem to think being labelled an "essential worker" should entitle them to regardless of how replaceable they are.

People should get living wages and there should be less wealth inequality, but this whole "essential worker" is just class warfare nonsense. Welcome to supply and demand, and the demand for "essential workers" went down. Happens a lot in the skilled labor market too, the answer isn't "but I didn't get mine's!", it's thing like livable wages, having enough jobs, universal health care, universal income, all the things people at least began talking about before they were distracted into class warfare due to Big Data Cambridge Analytica troll factory disinformation campaigns by the ultrarich. Like I get people would be perfectly ok with leaving someone with a shit job in the trash just because they weren't an "essential worker", but they should try some empathy instead of thinking a label makes them special, whether it actually does or not.

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 hours ago

Yep, livable wages, having enough jobs, universal health care, universal income are The Obvious Solution.

[–] Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone -1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

I quoted oxford dictionary. What definition is mine? You seem to think this is like the word cool or bad. There's not multiple different definitions. A skill is the ability to do something well. You seem to be giving the word "well" much more magnitude than it by definition holds. Doing something well means doing it satisfactory or in a good way. If all these people are doing unsatisfactory work, doing no good work, and yet still allowed to hold jobs; seems like a stretch.

[–] Strider@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We had rounds of applause here in Germany and then changed... absolutely nothing regarding those workers.

[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Oh shit. I thought "clapping for NHS workers" was a UK-only bout of absolute stupidity.

Here in Denver people would go outside at the predetermined time every night and howl at the sky, for the hospital workers.

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My peak body, the Australian Computer Society is advocating that we should be happy with the wages earned in the late 1990's, so clearly we're not essential.

Source: https://ia.acs.org.au/content/ia/article/2023/it-teams--salaries--rebalancing--after-pandemic.html

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

You might not like it, but 90s wages are peak body

-Australian Computer Society

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

While we absolutely need a higher minimum wage and better worker protections, "essential" and "unskilled" are not synonymous. You can have one without the other.

[–] Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No such thing as unskilled labor. Period.

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is such a strange, nonsensical take to me. It's not saying "these workers are good and those workers suck lol" - it's just recognizing the fact that there are jobs that take years to develop the skills for, which has the consequence that (among others things) replacing these workers is incredibly difficult. And then there are jobs that take five minutes to learn to perform, where replacing workers is trivial.

You can put all the "period"s you want, but these different types of jobs objectively behave differently in the market - their differences have real consequences, which makes the distinction a useful one for describing market forces, whether you like it or not.

[–] Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No such thing as unskilled labor. Give me one example. You argue semantics because by definition, Labor takes skill. Even walking is a skill.

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You accuse me of arguing semantics, but you're the one insisting on blindly using your own definition of the word and ignoring the fact that other useful definitions can exist as well.

But, just to make you happy, let's rename these terms to "Group 1 jobs" and "Group A jobs" (to avoid potentially saying that one group is better because they have a lower number or letter). In doing so, we avoid using your trigger word "skill", and can still arrive at the same useful objective distinction as follows:

We can define "Group 1 jobs" as ones that require years of job-specific instruction to perform successfully, and "Group A jobs" as ones that require minutes or days of instruction to perform.

And, as we see, regardless of the name we give them, these categories still correctly predict the behavior of market forces, and are therefore useful terms.

Is that better for you?

[–] Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The word your looking for is: qualifications.

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Again, the point is that for the most part the names don't really matter. We can call them "bloopity jobs" and "glorbo jobs" and get exactly the same predictions - I'm sorry that people have given these categories names you don't like, but the categories remain descriptive and useful nonetheless.

[–] Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No, the point of "unskilled labor" as a phrase at all, is to enforce the dichotomy that not everyone deserves food and shelter. It reinforces the notion that a person deserves less than livable circumstances because they are not as "skilled" as you. This implies you don't deserve to live if you don't help the bottom line go up. It's ableist at best and completely dishonest the way you twist it.

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

This is how that went for me, working in the social/care sector (with kids):

During Covid we were praised. Except for a few weeks (in 2 years), we took care of their kids. Worked normally - not from home, obviously.

In this country, preschool childcare personnel are already on the bottom of the totem pole that is working anywhere in the social/care sector.

Of course, once we pushed through, we'd all get a raise! Right?!

Yeah, no, we got the corporate speech instead. How dire the situation is and that we must all pull together now: same shitty pay, more hours, less personnel, fewer days off. We had it too good so far (they really said that).

That was a few years ago already. I left the job. Other jobs aren't better. Working with kids sucks in this country, because people with CEO-like delusions of grandeur want to "streamline" it, meaning fewer workers, more kids, less budget. The shitty pay isn't even the most important thing tbh.

We all know where the bleeding dry of the social sector ends. This is the beginning.

The shitty pay isn’t even the most important thing tbh.

it absolutely is, even if it's not pay that you receive, but if hospitals had more money, they could hire more employees and that'd reduce pressure on the single worker. That's why it would still be a good thing.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Why couldn’t they work from home and take care of their own kids?

[–] henfredemars 2 points 1 day ago

It’s a disease of greed and they won’t stop until it kills the very systems on which we all depend.

[–] frunch@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Schrödinger's Essential Worker

[–] xia@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

IIRC, the IRS says your skills, time, and labor have no value, and all your wages are basically a gift of pure profit.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
[–] xia@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 9 hours ago

Keep in mind that this is far from my area of expertise, and only stood out to me in the news as one of those perverse legal-isms (like bees being fish) that has no notable effect on day-to-day reality.

Suppose you have a teller break a large bill for you... you give 'em a $100, and they give you 10x$10's. There is no income event that has occurred, because the value exchanged for value is equal.

Likewise, when you purchase a product from a store with a $100, the business deducts the cost of the product (not just the cost of their wholesale purchase of the product, but also the cost of their store, labor, etc) for tax purposes... supposing the sum of those costs to be $99, they are then taxed on only $1 of profit (thus paying only cents in tax).

As I recall, there was a high-profile court case where a tax protestor claimed they owed no taxes because their earnings exactly matched their cost in labor provided to their employer (making it an even exchange), and the IRS won the court case by admitting to the court that the time and effort one provides an employer has no value.

[–] WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

Anything to make you keep living for them.