Debs!!!

Audience Question: What is a tradesman or a skilled worker? Why should there be any distinction between a tradesman and any other worker in a shop?

Eugene Debs: That is not a very easy question to answer. There used to be a great many skilled mechanics who are now common workers. In proportion as machinery is improved the skill of the trade is transferred from the worker to the machine; and the skilled labor of one day becomes the common labor of the next. The locomotive engineer has always regarded himself as a skilled worker, and he has refused to affiliate with what is called the common laborer. Within the next few years the locomotive engineer will probably become a motorman and he will then come off the perch. The work will be so simple that almost any worker can perform it. I have already referred to the coopers. In the town where I live there used to be a number of cooper shops in which there were skilled men; and they had a large and strong Coopers’ Union. All the coopers that worked there belonged to it. And these coopers didn’t have anything to do with common labor. They flocked by themselves upon the theory that they were skilled men and could not afford to put their skill on the same level with the common labor of unskilled workers. During the last few years that trade has undergone a complete change. The skilled coopers have practically disappeared and but a shadow of the old union remains. Now, if you will ask that old cooper, who was a skilled man and belonged to a union that represented skilled labor a few years ago — if you will ask him who the skilled man is, I think he can give you a satisfactory answer to your question. The skill of the trade is being gradually eliminated, and we are taking cognizance of this fact. We Industrial Workers recognize no aristocracy of skill. If any partiality were to be shown, however, I would give the unskilled man the benefit of it, because he needs it most. But there is no such discrimination in the Industrial Workers. The workingman, skilled or unskilled, is a worker; a man; and, whatever his occupation, has all of the wants and aspirations and is entitled to all the rights and opportunities of a human being for self-development. The ma- chine is rapidly reducing workers to a common industrial equality, making the unskilled man the productive equal of the skilled man. The machine is the skilled man, and when he gets through, that question will have answered itself.

source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1905/051123-debs-craftunionism.pdf

EDIT: By the way I see the same thing happening to STEMlords, actively.