I'm sure we all remember a few months ago, the UK Government released a list of all the jobs that are either considered skilled or unskilled. According to the Government, any job that's salary is under £25,600 is classed as 'unskilled'; whereas those jobs earning above this amount yearly are classed as 'skilled'. This means jobs such as carers, construction workers, radiographers, occupational therapists, farmhands, physiotherapists, paramedics and hotel cleaning staff, are now classed as being 'unskilled'. I completely disagree.
For starters, let's look at carers. Where would we be without them? In a great struggle, probably. For those of you who don't know, the role of carers is to provide care for those who struggle to look after themselves. This includes things such as bathing them, preparing food, general household 'chores', helping them get dressed, and collecting/giving service user's their medication. How many of you reading this reckon you could do all of this all week, seeing multiple service user's, and go about your own life? I know I certainly couldn't. In fact, I know the majority of people 'in charge' of this country couldn't do it. And yet this job is now classed as 'unskilled'. How they came to this decision I will never know.
And then we move on to construction workers. Without them, we wouldn't have any of the buildings we currently have today and will continue to have in the future. I am in constant amazement on how these people can build something and have it not fall down. I will admit, when I was at school, I did slightly judge those who said they wanted to go into the construction industry as at the time I didn't see it as being a completely skilled job, which I guess may be because of how adults around me, such as teachers and society in general, viewed this line of work. But I now know this is not the case. Those who work in construction are very much skilled workers. If someone said to me right now "build a house that will not fall down and is fully functioning (i.e. has loads of different rooms, plumbing, etc)", I couldn't do it. Could you?
Let's look at those who work in hospitals: radiographers; occupational therapists; physiotherapists; and paramedics. I don't think any of us could do any of those jobs (unless you already do, in which case I applaud you). Radiographers have to use x-ray and ultrasound machines to look at what is wrong with a patient. This is such an important job because they have to ensure the images they get are accurate so as not to misdiagnose patients. Occupational therapists have to help patients, who are most likely disabled, ill, or injured, improve, regain, and develop skills needed for their day-to-day lives. Physiotherapists have to help people regain their strength after illness or injury and help maintain people's health. Paramedics have to go to scenes where they might not always know what to expect and provide urgent help for people and in the majority of cases have to rush them to hospital. Can someone please tell me how any of these jobs can possibly be classed as being unskilled? HOW?! Without these jobs, we would all be pretty much screwed. And not just anyone can walk into any of these jobs and just get on with it. It takes a pretty special and all-round amazing person to be able to do any one of these jobs.
Farmhands (and farmers in general) are also incredibly important as, without them, we wouldn't be able to eat. Sure, you can grow your own food, but you wouldn't be able to live off that alone. But even without thinking about food, farmhands and farmers work incredibly long hours in all types of weathers that the vast majority of us could never even think about doing. For example, during lambing season, farm workers have to be up at all hours, quite often in the middle of the night when it's still winter (lambing season often starts in February but some lambs can be born around Christmas) and have to be on hand to help deliver the lamb(s) if the mother is struggling. There are so many other elements of farming I could get into right now, but I feel you could only really understand how much of a struggle farming is if you were either surrounded by it or experienced it first-hand.
Also, hotel cleaning staff (in fact ANY cleaning staff) are so important. It's easy of you to think you're a really tidy person, but these are the people who, in between hotel guests, will clean the room for you so you don't discover any nasty little surprises upon entering the room. Sure, I'm sure we've all stayed in a hotel room where we've discovered a stain on the bedding or have realised the glasses in the bathroom have a lipstick stain on them. But on the whole, I don't think I can really think of any bad hotel experiences in terms of cleanliness. The majority of hotels (in fact, all hotels) have SO MANY rooms and a lot of us, myself included, struggle to even clean a few rooms in our house/flat. Yet the cleaning staff have to clean HUNDREDS on a daily basis and on very little pay.
I find it completely strange and deluded that the current (as of June 2020) UK Government has essentially decided that any job that earns below a certain amount is deemed 'unskilled', yet without any of these jobs, our country would completely fall apart. And that's not to say that the jobs that are deemed 'skilled' don't keep our country going, because they do, but the jobs deemed 'unskilled' also do the same thing. These people work incredibly long hours on very little pay, yet the Government refuse to recognise the hard work these people actually do. They have absolutely no idea on the hard work these people do and have no idea what it's like to work long hours like that on incredibly little pay.
I hope this post has in some way proved to you that all jobs are equally as important. I also hope that if anyone currently in Government is reading this (lol - definitely not going to happen), that you rethink this idea of putting jobs into categories of 'skilled' and 'unskilled' just based on pay, when this is definitely not enough to go off.
Love Beth xx