This is a term that refers to people involved in manual
labour and earn daily wages. They are at the lowest rung of the job- status hierachy.
The use of 'blue' probably comes from the practice of most of these vocations using blue
uniforms to demarcate their workers from others in the hierarchy. For example the 'white
collar' workers are educated professionals working in offices at desks and on computers.
The colour code again indicates their regular attire to be mainly
white.
In recent times, there have been references to green
collars who are people working in the environment industry, brown and grey collars who
would be the technician level workers who fix your phones or computers
etc.
With an influx of new job profiles now a days, new
terms are being coined by the day. For example, the newly minted term 'cyber coolies'
refers to people working in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. Coolies
would indicate 'blue collar' work but it is to do with computers. So could they be then
called grey collars? Worth considering!
No comments:
Post a Comment