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.
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.
It might be better to call it low skill or something like that. The point is that there are jobs that can quickly be taught on the fly and have you productive in a few days, and that this is different from jobs that may require years of potentially highly specialized training. Working in a McDonalds Kitchen and in an Amazon warehouse are both much closer to the former than to the later.
The point is: While some difference in pay might be justifiable (to compensate for the lack of income during the time it took highly skilled laborers to get their skill and as part of a system of incentives to encourage people to pursue these careers), the magnitude of that difference in most places is very much not!
A full-time job should pay a wage from which a family can live. Doesn’t have to be great and doesn’t have to come with yearly vacations abroad, but it has to be enough for food, shelter, transportation and some entertainment. The problem is that we are very much not at that point any more. (Though this even extends to a lot of jobs that do require year-long training…)
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.
You can rank anything, and piling boxes such that they don't fall over and kill someone is more dangerous with more expertise than cooking McDonald's burgers for 2min then doing it again.
Aircraft engineers and mechanics used to be considered unskilled labor until the 1950s. They were only "reclassified" during the Cold War because there weren't enough people going into the profession to keep up with the demand.
My tech who knows how to take and read basic vital signs, flip granny like a pancake and wash her genitals without giving her an infection, walk her to the bathroom without yanking her IV out or cracking her head on the floor, the basic legal aspects of a psych admission, and the basics of psychosis, mania, etc well enough to briefly counsel a patient on their symptoms and which ones are important enough to notify me about-
-makes 16 an hour. Not that the warehouse worker doesn't deserve a living wage, but to call that skilled labor, and especially more skilled labor than food service is frankly delusional.
Even my partner who does work in food service knows more than the warehouse worker because he knows the biology and chemistry of food safety and sanitation, prevention of allergen cross contamination, knife / sharps safety, and fire and fire extinguisher classifications and how to put out a grease fire-
-and that was before he got a job in the hospital kitchen where he also learned about specialized medical diets including food and drink thicknesses and consistencies, sodium and carb restrictions, and even safety trays for violent and suicidal patients.
What's in that warehouse training? How to lift with your knees instead of your back and rotating stock? Storage temperatures? Because food service does all that too. The only thing they might know more about than a food service worker is how to use a forklift, and that's only if their employer thought they were intelligent and level headed enough to bother training on one, and this post does not evidence those qualities.