The Myth of Unskilled Labor

All Employees ARE Skilled

Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we have been hearing a lot about the essential jobs being “unskilled” labor jobs. I put quotes around the word “unskilled” because that’s a misnomer. ALL jobs require skills even though some jobs like grocery store workers, servers in a restaurant, delivery people etc. don’t require a college education. I am writing about this topic based on my experience with teaching at the PCC Career Pathways and experience with these supposed “unskilled” jobs like a cashier in a grocery story and a barista at a coffee shop. We need to stop calling jobs like these unskilled because not only is it an insult, it’s simply not true.

What is my expertise on this subject? Currently I am a part-time ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) and a writing tutor at Portland Community College. I have been teaching at PCC since January 2008 and have held many other part time jobs with PCC over the years. One of the classes that I taught in the spring of 2011 was titled “ESOL Food Service” for PCC Career Pathways. Due to budget issues, this class no longer exists. I learned a lot about job readiness skills when working with this program.

This Food Service class was a 10-week course and designed specifically for ESOL students who were interested in becoming cooks, servers, and cashiers at places ranging from restaurants to retirement homes. I worked with a team of employment specialists, and my job was to teach the necessary skills for these kinds of jobs and job readiness skills. They needed to take the Food Handler’s card test in English, so we spent the first few weeks learning about proper hand washing and safe handling of food. Since they were ESOL students, I was also teaching the necessary English vocabulary words. The students also learned about other job skills such as helping customers, problem solving at work, taking inventory, etc. The course also covered job readiness skills such as filling out applications, writing resumes and cover letters, and interview skills. We discussed direct skills and transferrable skills with direct skills being actual job experience related to the job title and transferrable skills relating to skills that a person has from a different job or being a homemaker. Some of my students never had a job outside of the home, but they raised children and ran a household which requires organization (i.e. scheduling and keeping appointments), good people skills, planning and preparing meals for their family, etc. Many of my students learned that they had many skills that were perfect for the various food service jobs they wanted. They were not unskilled.

The Heroes in the Grocery Store

While I was in college, I had many of these so-called “unskilled labor” jobs. The one I want to focus on was my cashier job at Thriftway. I’m choosing to focus on my job at the grocery store because these employees have one of the many jobs that is considered essential during the COVID-19 pandemic and the quarantine. Besides being at the front line with stressed out shoppers (“Whaddya mean you’re out of toilet paper!!”) and being exposed to the virus, grocery store workers have always had a job that requires more skills than people can imagine. I worked at Thriftway in 1992 and many things have changed especially with technology. However many of the required skills have not changed. To be a grocery store worker, you have to be good at math (those machines don’t do everything!), use a cash register and process different types of payments, provide excellent customer service, able to stand for long periods of time and solving problems that arise. In recent years, computer skills are also important since cash registers, inventory and orders, payroll, etc. are all on a computer system. With the pandemic, many grocery store workers are doing extra work to keep the shopping carts sanitized, directing shoppers to the “enter only” and “exit only” doors if the store has two entrance points, encouraging shoppers to use the hand sanitizer at the entrance and some stores are not allowing reusable shopping bags since the coronavirus may survive on cloth surfaces. All of this while maintaining a realistic positive attitude. These are all skills and attributes that are needed to be good at this job. As for my Thriftway experience, I have applied the skills I learned in this job to my teaching job.

(*Note: I want to point out that grocery store workers don’t want to be called “heroes” because they didn’t sign up for a dangerous job. Check out an interesting article about this at the following link: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/i-work-grocery-store-dont-call-me-hero/610147/ )

Transferrable Skills

You may be asking, “How can skills from a grocery store job apply to teaching college classes?” I will focus on customer service and problem solving skills. First of all, good customer service applies to teaching even though the context is different. Customer service means having good people skills, and this is vital to being a good instructor. It’s being willing to help students and having patience with answering their questions. People who have good customer service skills are approachable and easy to talk to. Some might think that a college instructor wants to be intimidating or just stand offish, but most of the instructors I know go the extra mile to assist students with issues that may or may not be related to the class. It can range from having trouble understanding the homework to not having a quiet place to study at home. Some students have issues balancing coursework, their job, and raising their children, and others have issues related to poverty such as not having a stable place to sleep, food insecurity, and / or not having the needed technology to access the coursework and communicate with teacher and classmates. I have helped students with borrowing laptops from the library, filling out SNAP applications, looking at their cover letters for a job, etc. That’s in addition to helping students understand what we have covered in class, correcting their homework, talking about their progress. Which brings me to problem solving. With any job, problems arise and employees have to find ways to calmly and quickly solve the problems they can and let others know if they need time to look into the problem whether it’s checking in with a manager above them or researching the answer on the company website or other related resources. Of course problems come up in and out of the classroom, and I’m thankful for the skills that I learned when I was a cashier at Thriftway. Essentially having a good skill set is vital for any type of job. This brings me to the issue of minimum wage being WAY too low.

Living Wages for All Jobs

Since all job skills are important, everyone deserves a living wage. There is NO such thing as unskilled labor. Whether you are a grocery store worker, engineer, restaurant employee or a lawyer, having the skills to perform these jobs well is required. No one should have a job that doesn’t pay for basic living expenses like housing, food, utilities, and healthcare. Yes I do realize that engineers and lawyers have to obtain college degrees, but that’s no excuse to make jobs in food service and grocery stores low paying. Even in jobs that are considered entry level, employees have to learn new skills on the job. I went to college for many years to become a teacher, and I still had to learn on the job. This is true for everyone in every type of job. In most places (depending on the cost of living), $20.00 an hour should be the minimum wage. I can already hear the counterargument, “What about the business owner!?” In most cases, the business owner makes plenty of money, thank you very much. This is especially true of large corporate businesses like Walmart and Fred Meyer (Kroger) stores. According to the Wall Street Journal, “the CEO (of Walmart) makes 1188 times as much as the median worker.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-walmart-the-ceo-makes-1-188-times-as-much-as-the-median-worker-1524261608 It’s clear that large corporations like Walmart can more than afford to pay their employees at least $15.00 if not $20.00 per hour. (*Note: for this blog post, I’m focusing on larger corporations and businesses with the CEO to median worker pay ratio. Smaller businesses face more challenges with an increased minimum wage, but that’s for another blog post.) In all jobs, employees are using their skills and learning new ones, so they deserve to be paid what they are worth and to make enough to cover their basic expenses and to put money aside.

Essential Workers before, during and after the pandemic

When this pandemic is over, we must not forget these essential workers because many of them have risen to the occasion and are doing above and beyond their job description. Because all jobs require more than a “warm body” which means there are skills that each person is actively using, companies need to pay them more. It’s criminal that people earning minimum wage are facing food insecurity, unstable housing, and no way to save money for unforeseen circumstances like a car breaking down or a serious illness. There was a time in the U.S. when people earning a minimum wage could support a family, buy a house and possibly even put money aside in savings. We CAN bring that back and make it better. In his article titled “The Bare Minimum,” Eric Schlosser discusses a brief period in U.S. history when minimum wage was almost enough to cover expenses and put money aside. Schlosser also talks about how this benefited the economy as a whole, “Yet the period of America’s greatest economic growth coincided with its highest minimum wage rates.” https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/bare-minimum/ The author was referring to the years 1956 to 1968 when minimum wage was worth a lot more than it is today. I bring this issue up because it highlights the importance of honoring the skills that all jobs require and giving these workers an actual living wage to pay for the skill set that each worker has.

“Essential workers” are not without important skills, so let’s stop calling their jobs “unskilled” labor. Whether people are working at a grocery store or a restaurant, they possessed the needed skills to get this job and learned many while on the job. The people who do these jobs are often underpaid and taken for granted. If they are the “heroes” that social media has been calling them, then we need to show appreciation and respect for what they do, and that includes paying them an income they can live on. When all of this is over, essential workers should demand better pay and recognition that they are skilled workers.