Requiem for the value of unskilled work
As jobs change, some people are locked out of employment, writes Ian Cole
ARE
we seeing the demise of unskilled employment? The catchcry of today is for everyone to get a qualification in order to gain full-time skilled employment. It might be a university degree, a TAFE course, a trade qualification or even to look at opening a business. That’s all very well but not everyone has the necessary skills, abilities or desires to do any of the above. The need for a “ticket” these days can be tough on those who may find the process of getting a qualification hard.
Self-esteem and pride can come from any kind of employment especially the kind that some in the community might look down upon. Pulitzer Prize winner Brooks Atkinson once said, “Don’t be condescending to unskilled labour. Try it for half a day first!”
Tim Minchin in his address to the students at the University of Western Australia said, “I judge powerful people by how they treat people in less powerful positions than themselves”.
In western countries some years ago, there were a number of people employed as doormen such as the role played by Anthony Hopkins in the movie Bobby. There were people employed as elevator operators such as Alf’s role in the play The One Day of the Year. There were people employed as porters at airports and railway stations. Inventions have tended to reduce the necessity of those particular jobs.
Self-opening doors have put a few doormen out of work, self-operating lifts have helped to make “Sam the elevator man” increasingly redundant, while suitcases with wheels have decreased the requirement for porters.
As unskilled work disappears, a certain percentage of the community is disenfranchised from the workforce.
Maybe then it is not a long draw of the bow to say that present day robotics is having that same effect in manufacturing industry where workers’ labour is increasingly taken by machines. History of course has witnessed this before, especially during the Industrial Revolution where bands of unemployed known as Luddites protested against the textile machines that were putting them out of work.
Maybe those in manufacturing are starting to experience what those who are unskilled already knew. And it’s all very well for those in employment to tell those out of work that they need to retrain. For many that’s scary.
On a lighter note in this quite serious situation, let me quote from someone who seemed to successfully move from one career to another when one career came to an end.
Test cricketer Arthur Mailey, who once held one of the worst ever bowling figures in first-class cricket at 4 for 362, turned to journalism after his cricket career was over and then in later life opened a butcher’s shop.
The sign he put on his butcher’s window highlighted why he moved easily from one career to another. It read,
As a cricketer, I used to bowl tripe.
As a journalist, I used to write tripe.
Now as a butcher, I sell tripe.
However, not all transitions can be as smooth!
Best though, to finish a serious issue on a serious note and with some optimism. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in an address in 1962 in Wheeling, West Virginia said:
“We believe if some have the talent to invent machines that put people out of work, then they have the talent to put people back to work.”
Ian Cole is a former Hobart teacher who was a state Labor MP in the 1970s.