BLUE-COLLAR WORKER

A production and maintenance worker who has a manual occupation, as opposed to a white-collar worker, who is employed in an office.

"One of the outstanding features of the labor force in Western economies in the 20th century has been the shift away from blue-collar to white-collar occupations. Between 1911 and 1951, the proportion of blue-collar workers in the labor force fell from 75 to 64 percent and has continued to decline ever since. By 2000, only about a third of the labor force in Western economies worked in blue-collar jobs."
(Docherty, J.C., Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor, Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2004)

"Blue-collar workers have always made up the largest proportion of the membership in American unions. Although the union's wage gains of the 1950s and the 1960s brought them into the middle class American, blue-collar workers have been losing ground since the 1970s due to inflation, reductions in benefits, and shrinkage of manufacturing industries."
(Anglim, C.T., Labour, Employment and the Law, A Dictionary, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1997)

A blue-collar worker's job primarily involves manual work that is usually performed in a plant. This type of worker includes persons who are skilled in various trades (e.g. carpenter, welder) as well as unskilled, or semi-skilled, and maintenance workers.
(adapted from the International Labour Organization (ILO), visited 2009-05-04, and Roberts, Harold S., Roberts' Dictionary of Industrial Relations, Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Affairs, 1994)

Moreover, blue-collar jobs require a lower level of education, fewer skills and less autonomy than professional jobs. Blue-collar workers are employed in three categories of occupations:

1. Skilled craft workers, including jobs which require special manual skills and comprehensive knowledge of the process involved, which workers acquire through on-the-job training and experience gained through apprenticeship in formal training programs;
2. Wholly unskilled work, or work that involves semiskilled production operations;
3. Service-maintenance workers, who perform duties resulting in the comfort, convenience, hygiene or safety of the general public, or the upkeep and care of buildings or grounds on public property.

(adapted from Anglim, C.T., Labour, Employment and the Law, A Dictionary, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1997)

Background

"Blue-collar workers is a term that has a stereotypical connotation in American English, based on a historical perspective. Originally it referred to the dress codes of workplaces. Industrial blue-collar workers formerly wore, and to a large extent, still wear ‘work clothes' with the shirts of a navy blue color. In contrast, white-collar workers were wearers of the traditional white, button-down shirt; they were not intended to do physical work. Some distinctive elements of blue-collar work are the lesser requirements for formal academic education; training is often learned on the job while working. Generally, the pay for such an occupation is lower than that of the white-collar counterpart, although higher than many entry-level service occupations. Finally, sometimes the work conditions can be strenuous or hazardous."
(Special Investor's Financial Dictionary, visited 2009-05-04)

"The term ‘blue-collar workers' was first used in reference to the blue work shirts the factory workers often wore, and later extended to maintenance and construction workers and anyone else doing manual work. The term was not used until the mid-1940s."
(Murray, R. E., The Lexicon of Labor: More Than 500 Key Terms, Biographical Sketches, and Historical Insights Concerning Labor in America, New York: New Press, 1998)

There is now a tendency to eliminate the broad categorization of jobs as white-collar or blue-collar. These titles are disappearing because of the favourable impression given by "white-collar" and the more pejorative notion of "blue-collar jobs." Also, the terms are unevenly applied and commonly misunderstood, as it is often assumed that the two together include all occupations, although neither category covers service and farm groupings.
(adapted from Anglim, C.T., Labour, Employment and the Law, A Dictionary, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1997)