I am from the UK and a native English speaker, but I don’t really have enough experience of different workplaces/industry to know the answer to this!
In my company it’s quite common to talk about blue collar/white collar workers. They aren’t really terms I used before working here. White collar refers generally to office workers, and blue collar to (in our company at least) operators, technicians etc in the manufacturing side.
I’m the only native English speaker in my department, and I’ve been asked if we should keep using these terms because someone read something that said they might be perjorative – and I honestly don’t know how to answer them. Google has inconclusive results – sure, some people are claiming that they are offensive terms, but I don’t know if this is real-life feedback or just some click-bait article that has decided to create some outrage over something that nobody cares about in real life. (Edit – a lot of results are also from the US, so opinions there might vary).
So – people with more experience than me, is there any real case for changing these terms, or are they safe to use in the UK?
11 comments
Too much of an Americanism to have any particular connotations. Also people take pride in being working class, ‘grafters’, so being referred to as ‘blue collar’ wouldn’t be any different.
It was used more in the old days, IMHO. You don’t hear it very often.
It’s not an offensive term. However people in Britain can be classist ,and might make snide comments, or talk in a way which express contempt or disapproval.
The terms were used for shorthand to lump and describe certain jobs and represent social class. It just depends if in your company’s case it’s still useful or not. It’s a term still in use in the mainstream media and popular culture (simple = easy to understand and remember). But for government, academia, industry bodies, i.e. Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the term isn’t used that much anymore. Mainly because jobs and class have changed since the mid 1950s.
We live in an age where people get offended on behalf of people who aren’t offended, so of course those terms are gonna offend some people
I am intrigued. I have lived and worked in UK for twenty years and I never heard it used in derogatory way.
In a very broad way, the terms are used in informal settings or in verbal communications: white collars indicating office workers (as wearing white shirts) and blue collars indicating manual workers (as they usually wear a uniform, stereotypically a blue onesie)
Not really used much in the UK compared with working class, skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled.
It more widely used in America but the colours are a thing. On ships we wear white as officers or blue as ratings to show the distinction.
(Not all ships, but usually passenger and company’s that have more traditional uniforms).
I’ve never used these terms in any of my professional settings. We would just refer to different staff roles like technicians and administrators. Or sometimes by contract type, for example in my org there’s a contract type for assistants/officers (basically people with no line management responsibility, in tech they would be “individual contributors”) then one for managerial/directors.
As a colour-blind person I find this question highly offensive.
It’s not offensive per se, but dividing people like that is, well, divisive. Blue collar jobs are traditionally looked down upon so a very senior engineer might feel like they were being considered “lower” for being labelled blue collar.
Also it’s really not used widely enough these days that people would necessarily know which jobs you mean, especially since it’s really difficult to judge which category loads of modern jobs would fit in. I’d avoid it for those reasons. No need to worry about offense or non-offense – clarity is the aim and it’s not clear enough. In your job something like administration/manufacturing might be a better replacement.
To my mind blue collar means someone does a job for a living, white collar means they mainly sit behind a screen replying to emails, filling out spreadsheets and getting coffee. If anything white collar is more of an insult.