Not trying to be too snarky here, but blue-collaredness and excelling at one's job are quite orthogonal in my head.
An interesting counter-example would be Friends, where one of the characters worked a blue-collar job, and none were explicitly "excellent".
Perhaps what pbh101 means is whether you're good at your job or not is unrelated to whether you're blue-collared or not. With that interpretation, you and he are in agreement.
Yep :)
Not sure how this relates to my original comment. For clarity, do see my clarification under sibling comment at [1].
My (now unnecessary) point was that whilst tool-and-die makers are blue collar, I consider that profession to be full of practitioners of excellence (at least the ones I have encountered).