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.
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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No such thing as unskilled labor. Period.
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.
We could even open up a new job type, Billionaire Hunter
Find a job you love...
We had rounds of applause here in Germany and then changed... absolutely nothing regarding those workers.
Oh shit. I thought "clapping for NHS workers" was a UK-only bout of absolute stupidity.
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
My peak body
Show us 🥵
You might not like it, but 90s wages are peak body
-Australian Computer Society
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.
Why couldn’t they work from home and take care of their own kids?
It’s a disease of greed and they won’t stop until it kills the very systems on which we all depend.
Schrödinger's Essential Worker
Anything to make you keep living for them.
Same applies to the military and our veterans. "Best I can do is Thank you for your service".
My uncle retired from the US Air Force in the '90s and got full medical and dental benefits for life for himself and his civilian wife, simply because he made it to retirement.
I retired from the US Air Force in 2022 and I had to qualify for 100% disability through the VA before they gave me the same deal. And that was only for me; my wife had to serve and get her own 100% disability rating to also qualify for those benefits.
Crazy how much things can change in 30 years.
to be fair, a military in this day and age is used as a hegemonic weapon for capitalism’s desires and a state’s choice to genocide. those who knowingly volunteer for that deserve to be reminded what they joined at every chance we can get.
"Why do they always send the poor?" -- B.Y.O.B by System of a Down
You fail to remember that a lot of the meat the military machine runs on, the actual soldiers, is comprised of poor and or uneducated folk, and those with few better prospects. And why do they not have better prospects? Because the system we live in is designed to keep you uneducated and under economic slavery so that it never runs out of meat for that grinder.
i do not fail to remember it. The solution, truly, is to do locally exactly what the US does abroad.
I understand why, I just think it’s a deplorable choice and I can’t respect volunteering for it.
They go through the grinder due to propaganda. They come out of it right wing asses spreading more propaganda but hey, flyovers at super bowls and preboarding flights!