But you can be good or bad at even unskilled labor. Work ethic comes into play there, I think, and depending on the job, mental/physical ability...
Sure anyone can have a good work ethic, but that's the point:
anyone can have a good work ethnic. Not just anyone can be taught how to set up and maintain a collage intranet. You need to already be proficient with various computer languages, operating systems, modern hardware, etc, before you even fill out the job application.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the trade club bit, but are you saying it would not be possible to have some form of "unskilled labor" trade club?
A tradless trade-club. SkillsUSA
[sup]TM[/sup] that doesn't require any
skill; Skil
lessUSA? You have to be in a trade in order to be in a trade club. You have to practice a skill in order to be skilled-labor. There are basic safety courses out there which are not trade-specific, such as the OSHA10hr, but those aren't chartered clubs who collect dues, hold minutes and agendas, and conduct regular events.
A trade club is industry-specific. Unskilled labor is not industry specific. Every industry has unskilled labor, but unskilled labor is industryless. An unskilled worker would have to choose an industry in order to find a trade club. For these Wall-Mart workers, there may very well be
retail trade-clubs out there for Wall-Mart workers to join, but that would be a *retail* trade club, not an unskilled trade club. I imagine a retail trade-club would train it's members on the art of customer service, the different inventory systems respective retail stores use, the science of price-pointing, etc. But that's all content specific to retail, and would help only unskilled laborers who are working retail, and probably wouldn't help that same worker in a non-retail unskilled job, such as a UPS box thrower.
Also, a retail trade-club would solicit members from every retail store in the aria, unlike unions who embed themselves in a specific company. A retail trade club would be made of Wall-Mart cashiers, the HR manager of Target, the cart pusher from Toy-r-Us, the small-business owner of the tiny pet store in the mall and all the tweens who work there part time after school, the Radio-Shack guy who never has a solution to your problem, and the guy from Lowe's who delivered your new dishwasher. Members of a retail club would go to that club to look for a job from among it's members who are hiring because those members
(ie, a Wall-Mart HR manager who's hiring) pay the industry standard for the type of job they want to fill. There's no unusual cut in pay or expectations. A cashier is a cashier, so through a retail trade club someone looking for a cashier job can expect to be paid about the same regardless of if they're hired at PetCo, Family Thrift or Scheel's. When the member presents themselves as an applicant, their membership would be a key talking point because of the *skill* and enhanced ability at retail which is assumed through membership. Likewise the main reason to look for a job through the trade club as opposed to Monster.com is to assure the applicant reasonable pay and expectations for the work they're applying for.
When any member, employee or employer, screws up (cutting hours, or walking off a job), they lose face within the club, they lose their marketability. It will become harder for a retail store to find quality workers. It will become harder for a bad worker to find a good job.