Which is why the very idea of “unskilled labour” is ableist.
I had to work with an occupational therapist for 2 weeks to learn how to wash my dishes at home without having injuries or breaking my dishes. I could not have walked into a job as a fry cook just because it’s entry level and “unskilled”. I’d need to learn some skills first.
There’s no such thing as unskilled labour for me personally, because any labour requires skill when your body or mind is disabled.
Did it take 4 years of school and another year or two on the job training to get proficient? There is such a thing as unskilled labor even if you personally have to work harder at it due to the cards you’ve been dealt.
I thankfully haven’t had to do physical therapy, but from what I hear, it’s painful and no fun if you’re doing it right…hope your dishes are getting easier, friend.
Painful, generally (but it shouldn’t be agonizing barring other health issues) and no fun really depends on the physical therapist.
The guy I went to was very nice and had 4 patients at a time in the big room, and everyone just talked to him, one another, or just worked on sets. It was actually quite pleasant to just do sets and listen to people talk about the best way to do a crab boil!
Which is why the very idea of “unskilled labour” is ableist.
they don’t exactly call it capable labor or anything.
They call it unskilled labor for a reason. It’s generally not complicated and not very hard.
Naturally being disabled makes things harder, but idk what you want me to do about that one. People with physical disabilities and the capability of doing labor don’t generally go together.
i don’t disagree, but that’s a different problem. I don’t think this is an ableist problem, i think this is probably more of a social service problem more than anything.
For some people with disabilities it’s a social services problem because they will never have the capacity to work for their income with their own type of disability. For others like myself it’s an occupational support issue. It took me a few years and several intensive OT programs, but I now ace every work task expected of me, I have progressed through my company and hold a senior position. After failing for 7 years after highschool to get a proper job, doing we’ll in interviews and then being let go before my probation ended because I wasn’t picking physical skills up fast enough, finally I landed a patient and understanding employer who responded to my OT and gave feedback to the my OT and worked with me to develop the skills I was lacking.
This was done through an existing social support program in my country where the government will subsidise a business for part of an employee’s wage, if that employee is enrolled in a disability occupational program, that way the business isn’t paying full price for half the labour while the employee skills up.
This program has existed for over 30 years, and yet it’s very difficult to get businesses to enrol in the program because it’s still expected that you come to a job on day one with the fundamental skills like being able to hold a pen properly to write (took me until I was 21 to consistently do it without pain, but I got there eventually). I’ve been on both ends of the program now, having signed up my organisation for a new hire, just a few years after I had finished my program. From the business perspective it’s 15 minutes of paperwork, you can hire a temp with the money the government gives you so you can have 2 employees for the price of one, and sure it’s a bit awkward because one of those employees isn’t yet fully able to do the job, but you quickly see improvement because you’ve got the right professionals involved, and it doesn’t matter because if its truly entry into level the temp will have it covered while the disabled employee learns.
This program exists, so within my country specifically I’d argue that’s where the ableism comes in. When the financial cost of hiring someone with a longer than average training period is removed, the only other reasons that remain are that you’d rather just hire the easiest person to train and that person is likely able bodied, and I’m not saying that’s wrong, that’s smart business, so I completely understand why businesses do it. My point I guess is that my current employment status and output of work is proof that people in my situation aren’t unemployable because we can’t do the work, we’re unemployable because we pose an added barrier to training, and therefore we have no edge in a capitalist society.
Even if I was eligible for a good, livable disability pension I would still want to work/volunteer in my same role because it’s what it love doing with my time and it fulfils me even without a pay cheque, but that still wouldn’t be an option for me without access to OT programs today learn through skills I need (I’m not eligible for a pension, in my country if you can work more than 8 hours a week you can’t claim a disability pension. I can work 10-12 hours, so I can’t claim)
For some people with disabilities it’s a social services problem because they will never have the capacity to work for their income with their own type of disability. For others like myself it’s an occupational support issue.
i consider both of these to be some form of social support to be honest.
the rest of the post i pretty much agree with. As you said it’s not a competency problem (although technically it is in terms of the hiring procedure) it’s a training latency problem. Even beyond that point, there are a lot of people with physical disability who can do various different kinds of work. Physical disability is rather broad as defined, so it could include someone with an amputated limb for example. While that’s not going to help, it’s most certainly not going to kill their job prospects, unless they’re a trained pianist or something. That might pose a problem.
I think the conceptual meaning of ableism is just, weird. For one thing it could very easily be implied that different people are “differently” able, which could be construed to mean that black people aren’t smart enough to work office jobs (to pull a historically relevant example) the other implication is better, i can’t really think of any exact definition that would pin down this phenomenon in such a way that i would be comfortable referring to a specific thing as “ableist”
I think the closest that you might get is incredibly bad accessibility design, stairs for someone in a wheelchair, for example. I guess to me ableism is more of a passive thing, than an active thing. Not hiring someone based on disability would either be discriminatory or just good ole capitalism in my eyes depending on the situation.
You might be able to use ableist to broadly describe aspects of society, but i feel like that’s going to be really uncharted territory and i don’t really want to go there.
I guess ultimately i just think discrimination is more than suited in like 95% of cases here lol.
Which is why the very idea of “unskilled labour” is ableist.
I had to work with an occupational therapist for 2 weeks to learn how to wash my dishes at home without having injuries or breaking my dishes. I could not have walked into a job as a fry cook just because it’s entry level and “unskilled”. I’d need to learn some skills first.
There’s no such thing as unskilled labour for me personally, because any labour requires skill when your body or mind is disabled.
Did it take 4 years of school and another year or two on the job training to get proficient? There is such a thing as unskilled labor even if you personally have to work harder at it due to the cards you’ve been dealt.
I thankfully haven’t had to do physical therapy, but from what I hear, it’s painful and no fun if you’re doing it right…hope your dishes are getting easier, friend.
Painful, generally (but it shouldn’t be agonizing barring other health issues) and no fun really depends on the physical therapist.
The guy I went to was very nice and had 4 patients at a time in the big room, and everyone just talked to him, one another, or just worked on sets. It was actually quite pleasant to just do sets and listen to people talk about the best way to do a crab boil!
they don’t exactly call it capable labor or anything.
They call it unskilled labor for a reason. It’s generally not complicated and not very hard.
Naturally being disabled makes things harder, but idk what you want me to do about that one. People with physical disabilities and the capability of doing labor don’t generally go together.
And yet we’re given no other means to ensure our survival other than to try to labour for a chance to earn a living.
i don’t disagree, but that’s a different problem. I don’t think this is an ableist problem, i think this is probably more of a social service problem more than anything.
For some people with disabilities it’s a social services problem because they will never have the capacity to work for their income with their own type of disability. For others like myself it’s an occupational support issue. It took me a few years and several intensive OT programs, but I now ace every work task expected of me, I have progressed through my company and hold a senior position. After failing for 7 years after highschool to get a proper job, doing we’ll in interviews and then being let go before my probation ended because I wasn’t picking physical skills up fast enough, finally I landed a patient and understanding employer who responded to my OT and gave feedback to the my OT and worked with me to develop the skills I was lacking.
This was done through an existing social support program in my country where the government will subsidise a business for part of an employee’s wage, if that employee is enrolled in a disability occupational program, that way the business isn’t paying full price for half the labour while the employee skills up.
This program has existed for over 30 years, and yet it’s very difficult to get businesses to enrol in the program because it’s still expected that you come to a job on day one with the fundamental skills like being able to hold a pen properly to write (took me until I was 21 to consistently do it without pain, but I got there eventually). I’ve been on both ends of the program now, having signed up my organisation for a new hire, just a few years after I had finished my program. From the business perspective it’s 15 minutes of paperwork, you can hire a temp with the money the government gives you so you can have 2 employees for the price of one, and sure it’s a bit awkward because one of those employees isn’t yet fully able to do the job, but you quickly see improvement because you’ve got the right professionals involved, and it doesn’t matter because if its truly entry into level the temp will have it covered while the disabled employee learns.
This program exists, so within my country specifically I’d argue that’s where the ableism comes in. When the financial cost of hiring someone with a longer than average training period is removed, the only other reasons that remain are that you’d rather just hire the easiest person to train and that person is likely able bodied, and I’m not saying that’s wrong, that’s smart business, so I completely understand why businesses do it. My point I guess is that my current employment status and output of work is proof that people in my situation aren’t unemployable because we can’t do the work, we’re unemployable because we pose an added barrier to training, and therefore we have no edge in a capitalist society.
Even if I was eligible for a good, livable disability pension I would still want to work/volunteer in my same role because it’s what it love doing with my time and it fulfils me even without a pay cheque, but that still wouldn’t be an option for me without access to OT programs today learn through skills I need (I’m not eligible for a pension, in my country if you can work more than 8 hours a week you can’t claim a disability pension. I can work 10-12 hours, so I can’t claim)
i consider both of these to be some form of social support to be honest.
the rest of the post i pretty much agree with. As you said it’s not a competency problem (although technically it is in terms of the hiring procedure) it’s a training latency problem. Even beyond that point, there are a lot of people with physical disability who can do various different kinds of work. Physical disability is rather broad as defined, so it could include someone with an amputated limb for example. While that’s not going to help, it’s most certainly not going to kill their job prospects, unless they’re a trained pianist or something. That might pose a problem.
I think the conceptual meaning of ableism is just, weird. For one thing it could very easily be implied that different people are “differently” able, which could be construed to mean that black people aren’t smart enough to work office jobs (to pull a historically relevant example) the other implication is better, i can’t really think of any exact definition that would pin down this phenomenon in such a way that i would be comfortable referring to a specific thing as “ableist”
I think the closest that you might get is incredibly bad accessibility design, stairs for someone in a wheelchair, for example. I guess to me ableism is more of a passive thing, than an active thing. Not hiring someone based on disability would either be discriminatory or just good ole capitalism in my eyes depending on the situation.
You might be able to use ableist to broadly describe aspects of society, but i feel like that’s going to be really uncharted territory and i don’t really want to go there.
I guess ultimately i just think discrimination is more than suited in like 95% of cases here lol.