Work and learning in jobs that are traditionally considered unskilled or low-skilled

This paper reports on part of a major research project on jobs traditionally considered to be unskilled. The project was funded by the Australian Research Council and involved detailed exploration of nine occupations, seven of which are considered to be low-skilled, to attempt to uncover the skill that was present in those jobs. It is common for the general public, policy-makers and, indeed, researchers to dismiss certain jobs as unskilled or low-skilled. In fact these perceptions are often the result of social construction of skill (Sawchuk, 2006; Healy, Hansen & Ledwith, 2006) and do not reflect the actual, or indeed potential, skills content of the occupations. As Vallas (1990) points out, judgments about skill in work have real consequences, which can affect people’s lives in fundamental ways. The project hoped to correct some perceptions of these types of job, to effect an improvement in training for the occupations, and to provide evidence for industry stakeholders to help improve the perceptions of the jobs and the people that undertake them. As the economy continues to evolve, new jobs will emerge and the findings of the project will continue to be of utility. In this paper we look at so-called low-skilled work through the lens of three of the nine occupations: retail assistant (non-supermarket), security officer and concrete products worker. In these occupations the consequences of perceptions about lack of skill are manifested in low pay, low status, low levels of government funding for training, poor quality training, and self-perception by workers that their jobs are not worthwhile. The method for each occupation was as follows: six interviews at national stakeholder level, two company case studies, a validation forum with industry personnel, and an examination of the respective qualifications. The research showed that all three jobs involved many technical and non-technical skills that were not generally recognised. The workers tended to internalise external negative perceptions of skill in the job, finding it difficult to articulate many of the skills they deployed. Managers and industry stakeholders, on the other hand, tended to be more aware of the inherent skill in the occupations. The paper uses the research in these three occupations to examine a number of issues. These include the reasons for perceptions of low skill in the jobs; consequences for workers and their on-the-job learning, of perceptions of low skill; the interplay of training quality and training take-up with the respect accorded to the occupation; and the ways in which perceptions of skill in work might be more closely aligned to the real nature of occupations