Human-Performed Work Task

A Human-Performed Work Task is a work task that is a human-performed task.

• AKA: Physical/Manual Labor.
• Context:
  • It can (typically) be performed by a Work Performer (such as a worker, such as a manual laborer).
  • It can (often) be a Production Task.
  • It can range from (often) being a Paid Work to being an Unpaid Work (Paid Work Task to being an Unpaid Work Task).
  • It can range from being a Social Manual Labour (such as waiting tables) to being an Asocial Manual Labour (such as trucking).
  • It can range from being a Low-Dexterity Manual Labour (such as railway platelayers) to being an High-Dexterity Manual Labour (such as plumber).
  • It can range from being Manual Labor to being Cognitive Labor.
  • It can range from being Economically Valuable Work to being Non-Economically Valuable Work.
  • It can a Personal Duty in a Work-centered Nation State (Russell, 1932).
  • …
• Example(s):
  • Paid Work, such as:
    • through an employment relation, such as blue-collar task.
    • through Daily Gig-Work (gig work).
  • Unpaid Work, such as child rearing, or community service.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • a Cognitive Labor Task, such as white-collar jobs.
  • an Animal Labor Task, by a Working Animal.
  • an Emotions Processing Task.
  • an Automated Work Task / Machine-Performed Work.
  • a Hobby.
  • a Slave Task.
  • Thermodynamic Work.
• See: Machine, Mechanization, Automation, Activity, Workforce, Useful Work, Research, Human-Performed Self-Maintenance, Hunting and Gathering, Natural Resource, Mechanization.

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References

2022

• (Wikipedia, 2022) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/work Retrieved:2022-10-31.
  • Work may refer to:
    • Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community
      • Manual labour, physical work done by humans
      • House work, housework, or homemaking

2022

• (Wikipedia, 2022) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(human_activity) Retrieved:2022-10-31.
  • Work or labor (or labour in British English) is intentional activity people perform to support the needs and wants of themselves, others, or a wider community. In the context of economics, work can be viewed as the human activity that contributes (along with other factors of production) towards the goods and services within an economy.

    Work is fundamental to all societies, but can vary widely within and between them, from gathering in natural resources by hand, to operating complex technologies that substitute for physical or even mental effort by many human beings. All but the simplest tasks also require specific skills, equipment or tools, and other resources (such as material for manufacturing goods).Cultures and individuals across history have expressed a wide range of attitudes towards work. Outside of any specific process or industry, humanity has developed a variety of institutions for situating work in society.

    Besides objective differences, one culture may organize or attach social status to work roles differently from another. Throughout history, work has been intimately connected with other aspects of society and politics, such as power, class, tradition, rights, and privileges. Accordingly, the division of labor is a prominent topic across the social sciences, as both an abstract concept and a characteristic of individual cultures.

    Some people have also engaged in critique of work and expressed a wish to abolish it. For example Paul Lafaruge in his book The Right to Be Lazy.

2021

• (Wikipedia, 2021) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_labour Retrieved:2021-7-1.
  • Manual labour (in British English, manual labor in American English) or manual work is physical work done by humans, in contrast to labour by machines and working animals. It is most literally work done with the hands (the word "manual" comes from the Latin word for hand) and, by figurative extension, it is work done with any of the muscles and bones of the body. For most of human prehistory and history, manual labour and its close cousin, animal labour, have been the primary ways that physical work has been accomplished. Mechanisation and automation, which reduce the need for human and animal labour in production, have existed for centuries, but it was only starting in the 18th and 19th centuries that they began to significantly expand and to change human culture. To be implemented, they require that sufficient technology exist and that its capital costs be justified by the amount of future wages that they will obviate. Semi-automation is an alternative to worker displacement that combines human labour, automation, and computerization to leverage the advantages of both man and machine.

    Although nearly any work can potentially have skill and intelligence applied to it, many jobs that mostly comprise manual labour—such as fruit and vegetable picking, manual materials handling (for example, shelf stocking), manual digging, or manual assembly of parts—often may be done successfully (if not masterfully) by unskilled or semiskilled workers. Thus there is a partial but significant correlation between manual labour and unskilled or semiskilled workers. Based on economic and social conflict of interest, people may often distort that partial correlation into an exaggeration that equates manual labour with lack of skill; with lack of any potential to apply skill (to a task) or to develop skill (in a worker); and with low social class. Throughout human existence the latter has involved a spectrum of variants, from slavery (with stigmatisation of the slaves as "subhuman"), to caste or caste-like systems, to subtler forms of inequality.

     Economic competition often results in businesses trying to buy labour at the lowest possible cost (for example, through offshoring or by employing foreign workers) or to obviate it entirely (through mechanisation and automation).

2001

• http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=2931
  • Work is any activity which contributes to the production of goods or services within the production boundary.

1932

• (Russell, 1932) ⇒ Bertrand Russell. (1932). “In praise of idleness: and other essays." ISBN:0415325064
  • QUOTE: If, at the end of the war, the scientific organization, which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work, had been preserved, and the hours of the week had been cut down to four, all would have been well. Instead of that the old chaos was restored, those whose work was demanded were made to work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as unemployed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry. This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous.

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