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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   32012 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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The Birmingham City Council employed (employed) garbagemen, roadworkers, and grave diggers, who naturally were mostly men. They also employ cooks, cleaners, and caregivers for the elderly; these are mostly women.

I think that one aspect of this is that not all jobs are equal in prestige. Presumably, all things being equal, being a dish washer will lead to more success on the dating market than being a garbageman. So the demand-supply equilibrium for the hourly rates of a garbageman are higher than for a dish washer. The invisible hand of the market saves us yet again.

This is not restricted by gender in any way. A classical low prestige occupation (especially at low wage levels) is prostitution. Basically anyone would rather work eight hours as a supermarket cashier than have sex for money for the same period of time. Thus the hourly wages for a sex worker are much higher than for a cashier.

Another non-monetary benefit of a job is potential for advancement. The dish washer can level up to cook. The garbageman can not really expect to advance much from experience, being the one who drives the truck is more a matter of having the right driving license than being an expert in garbage collection operations. I am doubtful that leveling up your sex skill will significantly increase your income from sex work. By contrast, the cashier might plausibly get promoted to assistant manager at some point.

This is the woke thing where an unequal outcome is taken as an indication for foul play. As usual, it is bullshit. Any female cook can decide to make it big as a garbagewoman. Any nurse-in-training can decide that she would prefer to deal with the elderly in a more permanent fashion and become a grave-digger. If they don't, this does not mean that the system is unfair.

Not disagreeing with your general point, but ‘dishwasher’ isn’t really a higher-status job than ‘garbage man’- although it probably has more flexible hours. That seems like a much more relevant difference, but maybe the UK employment market is different.

Upvoting not just for the very sensible analysis but for "deal with the elderly in a more permanent fashion".

Another non-monetary benefit of a job is potential for advancement. The dish washer can level up to cook. The garbageman can not really expect to advance much from experience, being the one who drives the truck is more a matter of having the right driving license than being an expert in garbage collection operations. I am doubtful that leveling up your sex skill will significantly increase your income from sex work. By contrast, the cashier might plausibly get promoted to assistant manager at some point.

Driving the truck is determined by experience and seniority in garbage collecting - it's not much easier than being the guy who gets out when necessary, but it is easier. But your point still stands because there's nowhere to go from there - you are either the guy who drives garbage around all day or you are the guy who drives around with garbage all day. You can't collect garbage so well you get promoted to management, not these days.

Does driving the truck not open up possibilities of non-garbage truck driving?

When I was doing IT for the council here it was the other way around - everyone started off in the tip or the depot and was trying to get a job in the trucks. Driving the truck waa the easiest job there, because you never had to do heavy lifting.

I meant my comment as "does driving the garbage truck not open up opportunities for truck driving in general?"

Ah I was thinking of advancement strictly within the same company.

Yeah, my hyphenation was done intentionally, but I was afraid it might be missed.

Yeah it's interesting actually - because of the way the motte is displayed on my phone, it placed "Does driving the truck not open up possibilities of non-" on the first line and "garbage truck driving?" on the second, and due to that separation I intuitively read it as non 'garbage truck driving', so same business, but not in a truck. But when I quoted your post after you explained what you meant it printed non-garbage truck driving on the same line, and it was obvious what you originally meant. Sorry for my confusion.

Anyway it does for sure, but council truck driving is nothing like private truck driving. Despite being the most precious person I know when it comes to smells, I'd be happy to get a job driving a garbage truck if I was out of work. But you'd never convince me to drive trucks interstate or for earthworking. The amount of money you get for the work and risk is completely out of whack.

Even lower management is probably hard-gated by a degree requirement that is likely out of reach for the sorts of people who become garbage men.

But my experience in blue collar jobs is that there’s probably a few jobs like ‘route lead’ or ‘shop coordinator’ which are management in all but name and basically the senior non-coms of the place. Those jobs are probably available to garbage truck drivers after 10 years or so.

Sorry, I meant my comment more as "does driving the garbage truck not open up opportunities for truck driving in general?"

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