ICE The elephant in the room

[FjordBCRF]

@LilDunFilly

I would not classify anyone working around animals, especially horses, as unskilled.

I agree. The animal component is the kicker for me. Just about anyone can learn how to work on an assembly line, operate a cash register, clean, wash dishes, etc. While farmworkers and ag laborers fall into “unskilled” I still think of that moreso in terms of physical labor and running machinery.

Just because someone can be taught to clean a stall and do barn chores relatively quick, doesn’t mean they have any horse skills. I don’t want non-horse people handling my horse. Or a non-dog person watching/handling my dogs. There is too much they don’t know and wouldn’t even know to pay attention to. Not to mention the risk factor with horses for the person too.

Anyhoo. We will also be supporting our local Mexican grocery store/cafe for dinner sometime this week. Dos tacos de tinga de pollo, sin cilantro, sin cebolla, con queso!

[fivestrideline]

@endlessclimb

I never said they are not necessary, or valuable in their own right. But jobs that can be trained in a week or less is considered unskilled. I’m not the one who comes up with the definition.

Unskilled labor Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

This bears repeating. There’s “unskilled” used as a disparaging term by TPTB to justify less than living wages and general sh*t working conditions.

Then there’s “unskilled” by the dictionary definition which refers to training time to get someone competent in their role.

[endlessclimb]

If leading your horse to turnout takes years of experience, might I suggest some ground manners installed on the horse.

Anyone who knows how to put a halter on can lead my horses around. Of course there’s the chance of a freak accident, but that’s the case anywhere. If something should freak the horse out that badly I’d expect anyone, skilled or unskilled, to let go.

Just to be clear here folks, we are not talking the trainer or even the barn owner. We’re talking about the poop shovelers. At least where I have worked, no stalls were picked with horses in them - that’s obnoxious to the people we are in this thread claiming to need to value more. The horse is either moved to another stall (if on stall rest), or tied somewhere, or turned out.

The turner-outer should not need a PhD in horses. They need to know how to halter and latch a gate.

[Demerara_Stables]

I think both sides of this argument are valid regarding “unskilled” labor in barns. Certainly if your facility is big enough that you can justify having people that are only doing stall cleaning, throwing hay, and turnouts, that is a much more basic skill set than a show groom. I was having this conversation with a local barn manager/trainer just a couple of weeks ago. They are large enough where they have stall cleaners that also feed and do turnouts and those people do not groom the horses, nor are they responsible for horse welfare.

However, very few facilities are big enough to justify two different classes of workers, so you really do need the person that is cleaning stalls and feeding horses to understand very subtle signs of colic or someone that will notice a slight swelling or slight lameness.

At one of my facilities, the person that is responsible for cleaning paddocks on a daily basis is also highly skilled in caring for horses and notices very small changes in behavior or minor injuries. I would not trust a person that is “unskilled” and learned how to clean stalls in a matter of weeks to have this level of responsibility.

[FjordBCRF]

@endlessclimb

If leading your horse to turnout takes years of experience, might I suggest some ground manners installed on the horse.

My point has zero to do with ground manners. Can the turnout person ID colic? More subtle signs of colic? Choke? What if a horse is cast in the stall before turnout time? What if the horse is slightly limping? What if the fence wire or board is disconnected or down, can they fix it? ALL things I saw at our short stint at what turned into a co-op barn because of crap like this happening with non horse people workers.

I don’t know any barns on my area that have dedicated turnout staff. Dedicated stall cleaner that doesn’t handle the horses? Sure. No issues with that, and that is more common in my area. That is unskilled. Sweeping the aisles? Unskilled. Watering/dragging arena? Unskilled.

Most horse and barn owners don’t want to take the liability of a non horse person handling horses, especially the ones of paying boarders in the case of barn owners.

[Sdel]

@FjordBCRF

Can the turnout person ID colic? More subtle signs of colic? Choke? What if a horse is cast in the stall before turnout time? What if the horse is slightly limping?

This is not a “skill” as it is an innate willingness to observe and act in a preventative manner.

There are plenty of horse skilled people who know better that can see all the signs and still miss, or worse, ignore them because it’ll make more work.

[FjordBCRF]

@Sdel

There are plenty of horse skilled people who know better that can see all the signs and still miss or worse, ignore them because it’ll make more work.

Believe me, I’ve seen plenty of that too. Sadly. Not so much with staff though, more from horse owners themselves.

[MunchingonHay]

I would like to share my experience when I worked with 2 undocumented “unskilled” grooms.

One of them was a college grad from Mexico who worked in IT with Verizon before coming to the US to work for more money as an “unskilled” groom. The second was just as smart.

Both of them had never worked with horses before and I would trust my life with them. They knew every bump, scar, whirl of hair, eating habits, and pick up if the one of our horses was a little ‘off’, etc of each horse in our 20 horse FEI 4* barn. They loved the horses as much as I did and I relied on them to do more than just move a pitchfork around. They tended boo boos, tacked up, hot walked, applied and gave meds along side me and one other white groom.

Most of the time these workers are not just coming in to clean stalls and wash water/feed buckets. They put in a solid 8-10 hours a day plus rotated night checks, 6 days a week, no holidays, etc. Just like me. An American born, white woman who you would call ‘Unskilled’ because I cleaned stalls and worked as a groom.

It really chaps my a$$ when someone looks down their nose at someone less fortunate then them. Those young men learned more about horse management than college students taking equestrian studies to earn a piece of paper.

You know what an unskilled person would be… the dude that holds the slow / stop sign at a road works area.

[Aussie_2020]

Oh no, flaggers are not unskilled, not proper flaggers. They take a course and are tested plus they have refresher classes to keep their accreditation. Depending on the job (and area) they will make anywhere from $36 to $52 an hour plus benefits.

So this is important to know, that so many jobs we might think are unskilled or jobs a monkey could do can be much more involved then we imagine.

[Sdel]

For the record, my worst horse boarding experiences were at what is considered one of the upper end stables in my area. They are the only one who used foreign “horse” workers from Guatemala. Everyone else has used college kids or local unskilled.

Those workers almost killed my horse because they didn’t understand how to administer Bute. I won’t lie, they had a superior work ethic as far as the stall cleaning went, but the horse skills and what was considered acceptable horsemanship left a lot to be desired. I’ve never experienced anything similar in the barns that used American barn workers, even the ones with zero prior experience, if the time was taken to properly communicate and train them in the barn standards.

It’s not “horse experience” that makes people care about doing a good job.

[CBoylen]

@endlessclimb

If something should freak the horse out that badly I’d expect anyone, skilled or unskilled, to let go.

That’s a firing offense. Rule number one for a groom is don’t let go.

[fivestrideline]

@Aussie_2020

Oh no, flaggers are not unskilled, not proper flaggers. They take a course and are tested plus they have refresher classes to keep their accreditation. Depending on the job (and area) they will make anywhere from $36 to $52 an hour plus benefits.

Thank you. Flaggers are responsible for keeping the other people on site alive after all. Doing it wrong gets people killed.

@Aussie_2020

So this is important to know, that so many jobs we might think are unskilled or jobs a monkey could do can be much more involved then we imagine.

YES

Just because you(g) do not know what a job entails doesn’t mean that person isn’t valuable for their skills and expertise. No matter what the visuals are from the outside. I’ve said it before - a majority of the service industry workers I’ve known (think retail and restaurant) could excel at an office job with the standard on-site training every employee receives. Very few office workers could make it through a shift at a fast food joint, let alone do it full time. “Unskilled” by the dictionary does NOT equal “low value”.

Anyways. Tangent. I expect people are going to find out REAL quick just how few of the mythological American Workers are waiting in the wings to take these jobs. And the average person/average horse owner is going to see a very different industry very quickly.

[Impractical_Horsewoman]

@endlessclimb

If leading your horse to turnout takes years of experience, might I suggest some ground manners installed on the horse.

Anyone who knows how to put a halter on can lead my horses around. Of course there’s the chance of a freak accident, but that’s the case anywhere. If something should freak the horse out that badly I’d expect anyone, skilled or unskilled, to let go.

Yeah, but at every barn I’ve been to, there have been horses that required a skilled hand to yes, even lead back and forth to the field to the stall. Was that a reflection on their owners? Perhaps. But part of the skill of being a good barn worker is dealing with horses when they have an attitude. Coping with the challenges of weather often adds an additional variable.

I agree that it’s ridiculous to call barn work unskilled, and, ironically, often the people who are loudly complaining on Facebook pages that “no one wants to work” and they won’t pay more than minimum (or less than) for such “easy work” are the ones with the most myriad skilled duties for workers, from dealing with difficult horses to navigating challenging setups for moving horses and equipment.

[MHM]

@FjordBCRF

Watering/dragging arena? Unskilled.

Easy enough to say until that person damages the tractor or the drag or the ring or the jumps. Or all of them at once.

[SBrentnall]

I entered under a skilled worker category in the software industry. From initial filing, through advertising my job and proving the work couldn’t be done by an America, to getting my final green card interview took FOUR YEARS. And you’re supposed to do all that BEFORE entering the country. It’s a completely unworkable system.

[FjordBCRF]

I’m just referring to typical definitions. Personally, I think heavy machinery outta be skilled too given that it’s pretty dangerous and thing can go very bad very fast.

[Djones]

This skilled unskilled tit for tat is in pursuit of…what?

[ThreeWishes]

I guess if you call it unskilled you can pay less. . To me my horses are priceless. And a barn worker is more than just a poop picker. They handle 1200 pound animals. They take note of who is eating. How much they drink. If the stall has less manure. ANY horse no matter how well trained can have a moment. I’ve boarded at barns with incredible staff. Well paid. Poop pickers don’t last. Mine are home now. and I honestly don’t see my day to day dealings with my herd as tedious. And if I need someone to cover when I cannot I would never consider the person I hired as unskilled.

[Ghazzu]

So horse handlers don’t need any real training.
Which is how we got an 800 some odd post thread on “unqualified” people putting blankets on horses.

[Djones]

@ThreeWishes

I guess if you call it unskilled you can pay less.

Well, let’s pause and reflect on that.

If a country, any country, is short on engineers, industrial plumbers, nurses, doctors, lawyers skilled in ABC, coders fluent in 123, etc…they are open to welcoming said SKILLED labor.

That’s the only place skilled and unskilled (under formally educated) matters.

Fussing about whether it is skilled or unskilled labor to gather the foods we and our luxury sport pets eat misses the point. Normal sorts of working humans with no criminal record will be hounded in pursuit of quotas roughly quadruple the previous administration’s numbers. A skilled human has sponsors and lawyers. Everyone else, notso much.

Fiddling about whether turnout and water buckets is Skilled or Unskilled is … pointless. Maybe just boil it down to Legally Represented and Sponsored vs The Unseen Laborers.

Am I wrong?