My question of the day.

[RandySF]

As I walked out of my office to the train, I saw construction workers toiling and sweating their asses off, and I asked myself, "Why does a guy who is building something make less than someone who pushes papre all day?"

[arcane1]

1. There are people building offices and cubicles on my floor

While we sit there and complain about the noise.

You just triggered a childhood memory, of sitting in the car with my parents, while garbage men dumped people's nasty trash into the back of a truck.

I said something like "Garbage men must make a ton of money! It's such heavy and disgusting work, it must have to pay a lot to make people willing to do it."

My parents set me straight

[RandySF]

3. Well

I don't know how it is now, but Detroit municipal garbage workers were paid pretty well.

[arcane1]

4. This was in VA in the early 70's. For all I know, they were acxtually paid a lot.

But the lesson I learned was: anyone can dump trash, so it pays low. If you go to school, that's where the money is, even if the job is easy and anyone can do it if they went to school.

It made me kind of sad.

[Locut0s]

7. Umm Garbage Workers often DO get paid fairly well...

Not as well certainly as a good white collar job, but often FAR better than a lot of lower end blue collar jobs. And they often have good benefits too, as they are city unionized jobs.

[arcane1]

8. That makes me feel better, considering the message I received from the conversation back then.

I think they SHOULD get paid well!

[Locut0s]

10. Unionized city jobs often pay more than you would think...

Garbage man, Mailman, Bus Driver (to a lesser extent), these are very highly coveted jobs in many cities. They also require just enough skills to elevate them off the bottom floor of blue collar work so they can keep pay somewhat high. They are still lower paying than most white collar jobs but they do overlap with a lot of lower end positions.

[arcane1]

12. This makes me feel good, especially since I had shittier jobs for less pay.

The funny thing: My parents and sister range from right to far right, and yet one had been on disability for 10 years, and the other two recently retired after decades at state and federal government jobs.

It will be an interesting visit this year

[Kali]

2. I always though janitors should make more than white collar workers

cleaning toilets vs sitting around yakking on the phone all day, surfing the internet and going to useless meetings...

[Locut0s]

6. The problem is there are plenty of people...

who are willing to take these "unwanted" jobs at low wages. Perhaps I shouldn't say willing to take them but HAVE to take them. They can't get jobs anywhere else so they take what they can get and this is what's left. Because there is such a large underclass of people looking for work, ANY work, they can pay minimum wage. Supply and demand unfortunately.

[Locut0s]

5. I think you know the answer but, because the guy doing manual labour is easier to replace...

Now the more skilled the manual labour the more training it takes and the harder to replace and so blue collar jobs involving skilled labour pay fairly well. Electricians, Plumbers etc... Lightly skilled labour is much easier to replace and so pays less. When you say pushing paper around all day I'm assuming you mean working in an office? Well office work often involves creating stuff too, like programming, which involves years of training and relatively high intelligence. Because it takes so long to learn these skills are valued more and earn more money.

It's not fair perhaps on a moral level. The guy working in the street building new roads or building houses certainly works harder physically than the guy programming but there's no doubt that he's easier for the company to replace.

[pipi_k]

9. You should have seen

The shitstorm that took place back in the mid 1980s when the direct care workers at the residential program (for the MR population) i worked at found out that burger flippers at McD's were making more than they were.

Never made sense to me. We were responsible for actual human lives. Most of the managers and staff were dedicated to the clients. Very competent and caring people doing a very tough job

The pay was an insult

[femmocrat]

11. Because the harder and dirtier the job, the less it pays.

Or so it seems.

[Xyzse]

13. You may want to check this out

This talk was pretty damn awesome.