📘 Part 3: Employment and job-related issues

This episode's vocabulary

Specialist knowledge (noun phrase) – advanced or specific understanding of a subject, usually gained through training or education.

Coursework (noun) – work (such as assignments or projects) done by students as part of a course.

Manual labour (noun) – physical work done by people, especially with their hands.

Poorly paid (adjective phrase) – not earning much money for the work done.

Mental labour (noun) – work that involves thinking and decision-making rather than physical effort.

Dexterous (adjective) – able to do tasks skillfully, especially with your hands.

Fall back on (something) (phrasal verb) – to use something when the main plan fails or is not available.

Strenuous (adjective) – requiring a lot of effort or energy.

Be-all and end-all (idiom) – the most important thing, or the only thing that matters.

Put (someone) out of a job (phrase) – to cause someone to lose their job, often due to technology or company changes.

Grasp the basics (verb phrase) – to understand the fundamental or essential parts of something.

Relative to (prepositional phrase) – compared with something else.

Progression (noun) – gradual development or advancement over time.

Logistical (adjective) – related to planning and managing how things are done or moved.

Union dues (noun) – money that workers pay regularly to be members of a labor union.

Training requirements (noun phrase) – the skills or knowledge needed to be learned for a specific job or task.

Desperate (adjective) – having an urgent need or desire for something, often because of difficult circumstances.

Socio-economic status (noun phrase) – a person’s social and financial position in society.

Responsibilities (noun) – tasks or duties that someone is expected or required to do.

Breakthrough (noun) – a sudden, important discovery or development that helps solve a problem or improve a situation.

Questions and Answers

Maria: What jobs are hard to do?

Rory: Well, that could be almost any job if you don't understand what you need to do. I suppose the most difficult would be those requiring some sort of specialist knowledge or training, like being a scuba diving instructor or a data analyst. Those require years of training to master. And I suppose at least some sort of coursework to help you grasp the basics.

Maria: Who should be paid more?

Rory: Well, I imagine everybody thinks they should be paid more. But ideally, the people who are paid the least, even though they do a great deal of work. So people like classroom assistants or manual labourers, I don't think they get a lot relative to other people. And I don't think they're particularly easy professions either. So why they're so poorly paid escapes me.

Maria: And what's the difference between payment for mental work and that for physical work?

Rory: Well, on the surface of it, it seems like the wages for mental labour are higher. And of course, by contrast, manual labour would not be rewarded as much. But I don't think that's actually true when you think about it, to be honest, because in my country, for example, people that have a trade, like a plumber or a joiner, make a lot more money, or the equivalent amount as a teacher, provided they're suitably skilled. So I don't think there's actually a difference, to be honest. I know the question is about what the difference is, but I don't think it exists.

Maria: And do you think that physical workers can receive higher salaries in the future?

Rory: Well, that's a very good question. If the progression in robotics technology is not as fast as we would like it to be, then they will probably be paid more because human beings will be more capable of doing things than machines. So the fine motor skills that we have are extremely difficult to replicate in machines at the moment. However, if we have some sort of scientific breakthrough that allows this to happen and machines become more dexterous, then I don't think they will. I think they'll be paid a lot less because their labour will no longer be required. So they will need to have some other skill to fall back on.

Maria: How important is giving training to employees?

Rory: Well that will probably depend on the sector of the economy they work in and what they need to do for their job. So if it's something like just picking fruit, then I can't imagine the training requirements are too strenuous. But if it's organising the entire crop harvest, that probably takes a great deal of skill and training or a great deal more than just picking the stuff up.

Maria: Is salary the most important factor when choosing a job?

Rory: Well that depends on how desperate you are for money. For people in lower economically developed countries or of low socio-economic status, then I can certainly see it being a priority. But that's not the be-all and end-all. Some people already live comfortably and can do what they like, so choice might be more important. Freedom of action might play a bigger role in their decision-making.

Maria: Do you think machines could replace human workers in the future?

Rory: Well, yes, because they already do. And that trend shows no sign of reversal, short of some sort of huge environmental catastrophe which I can't even imagine right now. It seems like that's going to continue into the future as machines take on more and more responsibilities because they're more capable and they don't require things like workers' rights or a union to protect them, which requires union dues. So why would you pay for those things if you don't have to from the perspective of a company?

Maria: And how have robots and computers changed the way people work?

Rory: Well, in some ways they've made life easier because, for example, rather than having a whole department to animate a film, you now get one computer to do it or one person with a computer to organise that. And so from a logistical and organisational perspective, then it's become much easier. But of course, that's from the company's perspective. From the perspective of the workers, it's made life more difficult because they now have to get jobs that are different from the ones they prepared for, or they've been put out of a job by these changes in technology or these developments in technology.