Frankly, trying to claim their jobs, which all require more education and have much higher pressure and consequences for error than mine, aren't white collar would have been rude and insulting to everyone.
I find your definition of "insulting" really confusing, as pretty much all "white collar jobs" are "I sit on my butt all day and think lazily about things with very little pressure" jobs. They push paper and write reports on things, maybe doing some annoying math at times, but the entire concept of a "high pressure" job with "consequences for error" seems entirely at odds with white collar, and I'd personally have expected people who actually do something important on a daily basis (unlike, for example, me) might would find being categorized as "white collar" insulting?
It's equally insulting to insinuate that some blue collar jobs don't also require more education and have much higher pressure and consequences for error than many white collar jobs.
There are many blue collar jobs that require a lot of education and the consequences of errors is loss of life.
Most of the people in that room had worked blue collar jobs, worked through school, and retrained in white collar professions.
I would have been incredibly rude to tell them "No, your job isn't _really_ white collar, and you haven't changed your social standing as much as you thought."
I don't know what country you live in, but social standing in the US typically has more to do with wealth, not the color of your collar, so to speak. It is not hard to find wealthy blue collar workers who have high social standing in their communities and beyond. Take for example a master plumber who owns their own business, or a general contractor who's grown their business in a large city. I suppose you could argue their roles tend to transform more into white collar roles of managing the business, but it's blue collar work and work that they did and probably still do themselves.
On the contrary you can absolutely be a white collar worker with low social standing in the US. It's not hard, I'd even argue most white collar workers fit that description. Think of a customer support representative working in a call center for wages. Their job is definitely white collar but it does not pay well and is the type of job you typically associate with someone struggling financially. Not someone of high "social standing".
In the US blue collar/white collar does not directly correlate to low/high social status. While it is probably true that white collar work is correlated with higher wages or salaries, it's the money that drives social status, not the color of your collar.
White/Blue collar, while correlated with income, has nothing to do with social standing.
A friend of mine is a construction foreman. He lives in a mansion in a suburb of a suburb, is a member of a highly regarded country club and makes more money than me. He’s blue collar.
A person cannot be proud of their individual achievements, self improvements, working at a job they wanted, or providing for their families? Simply because many others have done the same?
Did you read the Wikipedia article? Grey collar is work that takes both intellectual and physical skill. It even includes surgery as grey collar. Thinking white collar indicates more education and pressure is the issue. There's white collar jobs that can be done by high school graduates, and blue collar jobs where life and death are literally a split second away most of the time.
I get that people want to Categorize All The Things, but this doesn't seem like a particularly useful category. If you look at the list in the Wikipedia article, it includes "skilled tradespeople/technicians". That alone represents a pretty big chunk of work traditionally considered "blue collar."
The Wikipedia article that comment linked to in a later edit says it's a controversial definition and says that such professions are typically described as white collar. That seems to support my statement?
