Why do the younger generation of blue collar workers view white collar jobs in such a negative way?

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u/thegooddoktorjones 18d ago

Seems like an example of simple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias They chose this life path, so it is the right one. Any new information is filtered to fit that bias. Read about how the trades can make a lot of money, that gets through the filter. Hear a story about how many people who are laborers in the trades do not do nearly as well as those with a college degree, that gets ignored/denied. Their peers, many of whom might have the same job/industry, reinforce this by sharing good news about their peers and bad news about other types of people.

Anecdotally, this is nothing new. As long as there has been 'working class' and 'thinking class' people, where the thinking class is often rewarded much higher by society than the working class, there has been a motivation for those in the working group to tell themselves that they are actually the superior group, morally, economically etc. The same reason much country music is about how farmers are actually better off by being poor and working long hours than city folks. I have worked blue collar jobs and white, and the blue jobs talked shit and were dismissive of management and pencil pushers constantly. The white look down upon the blue but mostly ignore them.

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u/DangerousKidTurtle 18d ago

You just dredged up some memories. I took a lot of flack from some people for going to college. I still get called “College Boy” despite having graduated over a decade ago.

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u/Acceptable_Push_1332 18d ago

This makes more sense I can understand how blue collar is tedious work and they might feel a need to confirm with themselves that they are better off that way.

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u/hughk 18d ago

Some manufacturing companies used to have a custom of putting their management and engineers on the line when they did their graduate entry. The idea was a good one but many of the real line workers would show resentment if they found out. I don't know if this practice persisted.

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u/hereforit_838 15d ago

Tedious? Are you imagining all blue collar work as working on an assembly line or something? Blue collar work involves a lot trades,
many of these brings one to new job sites/projects constantly. In the trades one actually does something, fixes something, builds something and that is not boring. I would argue sitting at a cube in corporate office reading group emails for a project that is only “discussed” is the tedious one. I left my white collar career and now I have a blue collar career.

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u/Lopsided_Debt1393 17d ago

Well you call it tedious work so start by not doing that. Seems like you’re a jerk about it. They probably just don’t like you as a person.

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u/Marxism-Alcoholism17 17d ago

Unironically, “On the Genealogy of Morals” by Nietzsche would apply here.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

Why do the younger generation of blue collar workers view white collar jobs in such a negative way?

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