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Comment by hellogoodbyeeee | Hacker News Reader

What does the term "new collar" mean? I understand the distinction between blue and white, but i don't get what could be new

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Judging from the context, I suspect it mean hiring former blue collar people to fill what would traditionally be professional roles (IT).

Basically, they laid off a bunch of expensive, educated and experienced people and are now looking to backfill the areas they cut too deeply in with cheap labor that they can boot camp to a minimum level of proficiency and then charge the same prices for.

>with cheap labor that they can boot camp to a minimum level of proficiency

That does indeed seem to be the case. There's a Huff Post article where IBM execs talk about their pilot program that's tied to this "new collar" business:

According to an interview with an IBM official, “The objective is to prepare students for entry-level technology jobs paying around $40,000 a year"[1]

[1]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/what-does-the-p-in...

She ties the term "new collar" to vocational training versus college degrees. I suppose the cynical view is that they are trying to shift jobs that are currently held by expensive, degreed, employees...to fresh, cheap, vocational school grads.

Edit: The letter she wrote to Trump outlining what "new collar" means: http://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/files/201...

Sorry as some one who did the vocational track no way do I fucking well consider myself anything other than white collar

Looks like a term for white collar workers that they want to treat like service workers

In this letter[1], the term is explained as

> "Entirely new role in area such as cybersecurity, data science, artificial intelligence and cognitive business"

Leaving the "Entirely new" bullshit, considering that "what matters most is relevant skills, sometimes obtained through vocational training", to me it seems that they simply want to hire software engineers while paying them 2x less than their market rate.

New collar is a bullshit term meant to avoid saying white collar, because they will have the same job with a pay cut.

[1]: http://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/files/201...

I don't get this either. Blue and White collar workers haven't gone anywhere. They've been sitting here for years terrified that their jobs would go away. Let us not forget that IBM just eliminated 20,000+ jobs just this year.

Where pr meets identity politics old issues can be forgotten. The hopeful branding of a generation of workers as "new collar" will reframe the class gap debates in a wonderfully confusing way for all who don't want to identify as either of the previous, equally non specific "collar" types.

I'm surprised that they didn't just go with "No collar", but I suppose it doesn't rhyme with either "blue" or "white".

Probably some HR Buzword Bingo

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