Regardless of whether the job is classified as a “skilled” job or not (and who’s definition of “skilled” you choose to accept or not)… the work and time your employee puts into the labor is as important to your business as any work you may be doing. Without their labor your business is meaningless. That labor deserves, at minimum, the employee’s ability to be able to live (food, shelter, medical, transportation, and some degree of entertainment). If, as a business owner, you cannot value your employees time and labor in your business with appropriate compensation to allow them to live, then you do not deserve your business.
the work and time your employee puts into the labor is as important to your business as any work you may be doing.
This is comically wrong. No, sorry… a salesperson closing a $1M contract for the purchase of some equipment, and a janitor dumping out some trash is not equivalent. Those jobs are not “as important”. Not even remotely in the same league. That’s why those two aren’t paid the same and why one position can be done by any jamoke off the street with 5 minutes worth of training versus someone who might have a decade of knowledge and training in the industry. Hell if something happened to the janitor for a day or three, work wouldn’t stop. Things would still get done. Jim in accounting could dump his trash into the dumpster in back. It would be a mild inconvenience, but it can still be done. It isn’t the end of the world if a no-skill job gets pushed back a bit. Not closing a deal that keeps the other employees working, the machines humming and the incoming coming in, is a whole different ball of wax.
Actually, I used to be a janitor, and you’re wrong.
Janitors have free access to the building, including to rooms with sensitive equipment and papers, when no one is around, and have the ability to steal shit, perform industrial espionage, destroy equipment, and otherwise completely fuck over their employers if they so choose. That’s why you have to have credit checks, background checks and sometimes even security clearances before you can get a lot of janitorial jobs.
Plus if the janitor doesn’t do their job and leaves the place a mess, the salesperson can’t invite the client in and make that sale. They could go out to a restaurant, but that further drives up costs.
So it’s not in actual fact that simple.
