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51-763: A blue-collar worker is a person who performs manual labor or skilled trades . Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled labor. The type of work may involve manufacturing , retail , warehousing , mining , excavation , carpentry , electricity generation and power plant operations , electrical construction and maintenance, custodial work , farming , commercial fishing , logging , landscaping , pest control , food processing , oil field work, waste collection and disposal , recycling , construction , maintenance , shipping , driving , trucking , and many other types of physical work. Blue-collar work often involves something being physically built or maintained. In social status, blue-collar workers generally belong to

102-465: A business unit to a different company in another country would be both outsourcing and offshoring, offshore outsourcing . Types of offshore outsourcing include: Nearshoring is a form of offshoring in which the other country is relatively close such as one sharing a border. Being nearby results in potentially beneficial commonalities such as temporal (time zone), cultural, social, linguistic, economic, political, or historical linkages. According to

153-811: A call to action to "invest in America" at the White House "Insourcing American Jobs" Forum. Advances in 3D printing technologies brought manufacturers closer to their customers. There have been several very successful stories of companies. In most cases hundreds if not thousands of jobs were created or reinstated. In the case of Starbucks , in 2012 it saved American Mug and Stein Company in East Liverpool, Ohio from bankruptcy. Some cases of reshoring have not been successful. Otis Elevators' reshoring effort did not go well. Otis says it failed to consider

204-516: A college education, whether or not they work in a blue-collar job. Some people who find themselves in academic jobs who were raised by parents or belong to families that are predominately blue-collar may take on some of the habits, processes, and philosophies utilized by laborers and workers. Some of these students, staff, and faculty refer to themselves as blue-collar scholars . With the Information Age , Western nations have moved towards

255-413: A high school diploma is required, and many of the skills required for blue-collar jobs are learned by the employee while working . In higher level blue collar jobs, such as becoming an electrician or plumber , vocational training or apprenticeships are required and state-certification is also necessary. For this reason, it is common to apply the label "blue collar" or "working class" to people without

306-410: A million workers dedicated to producing a single kind of product. However, many companies are reluctant to move high value-added production of leading-edge products to China because of lax enforcement of intellectual property laws. Growth of offshoring has been linked to the availability of reliable and affordable communication infrastructure following the telecommunication and internet expansion of

357-430: A prominent destination for production offshoring. Another focus area has been the software industry as part of global software development and developing global information systems . After technical progress in telecommunications improved the possibilities of trade in services , India became one prominent destination for such offshoring, though many parts of the world are now emerging as offshore destinations. Since

408-505: A result, concepts such as remote insourcing were created to give clients more control in managing their own projects. Nearshoring still has not overcome all barriers, but proximity allows more flexibility to align organizations. Production offshoring, also known as physical restructuring , of established products involves relocation of physical manufacturing processes overseas, usually to a lower-cost destination or one with fewer regulatory restrictions. Physical restructuring arrived when

459-400: A serious concern for democratic governments and ordinary citizens who may be adversely affected by unregulated, offshore activities. Further, the rising costs of transportation could lead to production nearer the point of consumption becoming more economically viable, particularly as new technologies such as additive manufacturing mature. The World Bank 's 2019 World Development Report on

510-567: A service and white-collar economy. Many manufacturing jobs have been offshored to developing nations which pay their workers lower wages. This offshoring has pushed formerly agrarian nations to industrialized economies and concurrently decreased the number of blue-collar jobs in developed countries. In the U.S., blue collar and service occupations generally refer to jobs in precision production, craft, and repair occupations; machine operators and inspectors; transportation and moving occupations; handlers, equipment cleaners, helpers, and laborers. In

561-542: A solution. English language skills are the cornerstone of Nearshore and IT services. Collaboration by universities, industry, and government has slowly produced improvements. Proximity also facilitates in-person interaction regularly and/or when required. Software development nearshoring is mainly due to flexibility when it comes to upscale or downscale teams or availability of low cost skilled developers. The nearshoring of call centers, shared services centers, and business process outsourcing (BPO) rose as offshore outsourcing

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612-677: A steady decline of their blue-collar workforce, subsequent population decreases, and high unemployment, poverty, and urban blight associated with Rust Belt economies. Blue-collar can be used as an adjective to describe the environment of the blue-collar worker or a setting reflective of that environment, such as a "blue-collar" neighborhood, restaurant , or bar . Comprehensive Employment and Training Act Manual labour Manual labour (in Commonwealth English , manual labor in American English ) or manual work

663-464: A whole will obtain a net benefit from labor offshoring, but it is unclear if the displaced receive a net benefit. Some wages overseas are rising. A study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that Chinese wages were almost tripled in the seven years following 2002. Research suggests that these wage increases could redirect some offshoring elsewhere. Increased training and education has been advocated to offset trade-related displacements, but it

714-582: Is GMT (the same as London). US clients nearshore to countries such as Canada, Mexico and nations in Central and South America. Cultural alignment with the business is often more readily achieved through near-sourcing due to there being similarities between the cultures in which the business is located and in which services are sub-contracted, including for example proficiency with the language used in that culture. Constraints imposed by time zones can complicate communication; near-sourcing or nearshoring offers

765-418: Is a partial but significant correlation between manual labour and unskilled or semiskilled workers. Based on economic and social conflict of interest , people may often distort that partial correlation into an exaggeration that equates manual labour with lack of skill; with lack of any potential to apply skill (to a task) or to develop skill (in a worker); and with low social class . Throughout human existence

816-413: Is a strong correlation between manual labour and unskilled or semiskilled workers, despite the fact that nearly any work can potentially have skill and intelligence applied to it (for example, the artisanal skill of craft production , or the logic of applied science ). It has always been the case for humans that many workers begin their working lives lacking any special level of skill or experience. (In

867-510: Is an oversimplification, highlighting it as a reason many socialist economic policies face challenges, particularly concerning the economic calculation problem. On the other hand, Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell advocate for considering all labor as simple labor, emphasizing the importance of accounting for training in more complex forms of labor. This complexity extends to determining what constitutes unskilled labor, as it raises questions about

918-492: Is no longer a comparative advantage of high-wage nations because education costs are lower in low-wage countries. In 2015, IT employment in the United States has recently reached pre-2001 levels and has been rising since. The number of jobs lost to offshoring is less than 1 percent of the total US labor market. The total number of jobs lost to offshoring, both manufacturing and technical represent only 4 percent of

969-464: Is often enabled by the transfer of valuable information to the offshore site. Such information and training enables the remote workers to produce results of comparable value previously produced by internal employees. When such transfer includes protected materials, as confidential documents and trade secrets, protected by non-disclosure agreements , then intellectual property has been transferred or exported. The documentation and valuation of such exports

1020-476: Is often used for information technology (IT) processes such as application development, maintenance and testing. In Europe, nearshore outsourcing relationships are between clients in larger European economies and various providers in smaller European nations. The attraction is lower-cost skilled labor forces, and a less stringent regulatory environment, but crucially they allow for more day to day physical oversight. These countries also have strong cultural ties to

1071-570: Is partially taken away by the progression of technology. Melanie Rojas et al in a 2022 Deloitte 's report commend adopting a combination of re-shoring and friendshoring - "working with other nations and trusted supply sources" - as a business practice and policy initiative aiming to promote supply chain resilience . After its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the People's Republic of China emerged as

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1122-454: Is physical work done by humans, in contrast to labour by machines and working animals . It is most literally work done with the hands (the word manual coming from the Latin word for hand ) and, by figurative extension, it is work done with any of the muscles and bones of the human body . For most of human prehistory and history, manual labour and its close cousin, animal labour , have been

1173-440: Is quite difficult, but should be considered since it comprises items that may be regulated or taxable. Offshoring to foreign subsidiaries has been a controversial issue spurring heated debates among economists. Jobs go to the destination country and lower cost of goods and services to the origin country. On the other hand, job losses and wage erosion in developed countries have sparked opposition. Free trade with low-wage countries

1224-411: Is sold. This is contrasted with using low-wage manufacturing operations in developing nations and shipping product back to the country that offshored the work. With nearshore outsourcing, the work is done by an outside company rather than internally, but in contrast to typical offshore outsourcing, the work is done in fairly close proximity to the company headquarters and its target market. Nearshoring

1275-486: Is win-lose for many employees who find their jobs offshored or with stagnating wages. Currency manipulation by governments and their central banks cause differences in labor cost. On May 1, 2002, Economist and former Ambassador Ernest H. Preeg testified before the Senate committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs that China, for instance, pegs its currency to the dollar at a sub-par value in violation of Article IV of

1326-498: The Greeks , Hindus , English , and Americans all created sophisticated social structures to outsource manual labour to distinct classes, castes , ethnicities , or races . Offshoring Offshoring neither implies nor precludes involving a different company to be responsible for a business process. Therefore, offshoring should not be confused with outsourcing which does imply one company relying on another. In practice,

1377-583: The International Monetary Fund Articles of Agreement which state that no nation shall manipulate its currency to gain a market advantage. The opposing sides regarding offshoring, outsourcing, and offshore outsourcing are those seeking government intervention and Protectionism versus the side advocating Free Trade . Jobs formerly held by U.S. workers have been lost, even as underdeveloped countries such as Brazil and Turkey flourish. Free-trade advocates suggest economies as

1428-642: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) made it easier for manufacturers to shift production facilities from the US to Mexico . This trend later shifted to China, which offered cheap prices through very low wage rates, few workers' rights laws, a fixed currency pegged to the US dollar, (currently fixed to a basket of economies) cheap loans, cheap land, and factories for new companies, few environmental regulations, and huge economies of scale based on cities with populations over

1479-599: The working class . In contrast, the white-collar worker typically performs work in an office environment and may involve sitting at a computer or desk. A third type of work is a service worker ( pink collar ) whose labor is related to customer interaction, entertainment, sales or other service-oriented work. Particularly those service jobs that have historically been female dominated such as nurses, teachers, early childhood educators, florists, etc. Many occupations blend blue, white, or pink-collar work and are often paid hourly wage-labor , although some professionals may be paid by

1530-543: The 1913 New York Times article "Near Source of Supplies the Best Policy", the main focus was then on "cost of production." Although transportation cost was addressed, they did not choose among: The term nearshoring derives from offshoring . When combined with outsourcing, nearshore outsourcing , the nearshore workers are not employees of the company for which the work is performed. Nearshoring can involve business strategy to locate operations close to where product

1581-468: The 1980s American companies have been "offshoring" and outsourcing manufacturing to low cost countries such as India , China , Malaysia , Pakistan and Vietnam . President Obama's 2011 SelectUSA program was the first federal program to promote and facilitate U.S. investment in partnership with the states. This program and website helps companies connect with resources available on a Federal, State and local level. In January 2012, President Obama issued

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1632-957: The U.S., an area known as the Rust Belt , comprising the Northeast and Midwest , including Western New York and Western Pennsylvania , has seen its once large manufacturing base shrink significantly. With the deindustrialization of these areas beginning in the mid-1960s and accelerating throughout the late 20th century, cities like Allentown , Bethlehem , Erie , and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania ; Cleveland , Toledo , and Youngstown in Ohio ; Detroit in Michigan ; Buffalo and Rochester in New York ; and St. Louis in Missouri experienced

1683-610: The amount of future wages that they will obviate . Semi-automation is an alternative to worker displacement that combines human labour, automation, and computerisation to leverage the advantages of both man and machine. Although nearly any work can potentially have skill and intelligence applied to it, many jobs that mostly comprise manual labour—such as fruit and vegetable picking, manual materials handling (for example, shelf stocking), manual digging, or manual assembly of parts—often may be done successfully (if not masterfully) by unskilled or semiskilled workers. For these reasons, there

1734-710: The community. To help with these projects, companies often turn to consultants that specialize in reshoring. In the United Kingdom , companies have used the reintroduction of domestic call centres as a unique selling point . In 2014, the RSA Insurance Group completed a move of call centres back to Britain. The call centre industry in India has been hit by reshoring, as businesses including British Telecom , Santander UK and Aviva all announced they would move operations back to Britain in order to boost

1785-540: The concepts can be intertwined, i.e offshore outsourcing , and can be individually or jointly, partially or completely reversed, as described by terms such as reshoring , inshoring , and insourcing . In-house offshoring is when the offshored work is done by means of an internal (captive) delivery model. Imported services from subsidiaries or other closely related suppliers are included, whereas intermediate goods, such as partially completed cars or computers, may not be. Lower cost and increased profitability are often

1836-651: The consequences of the new location and tried to do too much at once, including a supply-chain software implementation. This is not an uncommon reshoring scenario. Bringing manufacturing back to the United States isn't so simple, and there are a lot of considerations and analyses that companies must do to determine the costs and feasibility of reshoring. Some companies pursue reshoring with their own internal staff. But reshoring projects are complicated and involve engineering, marketing, production, finance, and procurement. In addition, there are real estate concerns, government incentives and training requirements that require outreach to

1887-451: The course of their work. Navy and light blue colors conceal potential dirt or grease on the worker's clothing, helping them to appear cleaner. For the same reason, blue is a popular color for boilersuits which protect workers' clothing. Some blue collar workers have uniforms with the name of the business or the individual's name embroidered or printed on it. Historically, the popularity of the colour blue among manual labourers contrasts with

1938-675: The economy and regain customer satisfaction. Product design, research and the development (R&D) process is relatively difficult to offshore because R&D, to improve products and create new reference designs, requires a higher skill set not associated with cheap labor. There is a relationship between offshoring and patent-system strength. Companies under a strong patent system are not afraid to move work offshore because their work will remain their property. Conversely, companies in countries with weak patent systems have an increased fear of intellectual property theft from foreign vendors or workers, and, therefore, have less offshoring. Offshoring

1989-437: The future of work considers the potential for automation to drive companies to reshore production, reducing the role of labor in the process, and offers suggestions as to how governments can respond. A similar movement can be seen related to Robotic Process Automation , called RPA or RPAAI for self-guided RPA 2.0 based on artificial intelligence , where the incentive to move repetitive shared services work to lower cost countries

2040-523: The late 1990s. Much of the job movement was to outside companies, offshore outsourcing . Reshoring , also known as onshoring , backshoring or inshoring , is the act of reversing an offshoring change; moving a business process that was offshored, back to the original country. John Urry, professor of sociology at Lancaster University , argues that the concealment of income, the avoidance of taxation and eluding legislation relating to work, finance, pleasure, waste, energy and security may be becoming

2091-494: The latter has involved a spectrum of variants, from slavery (with stigmatisation of the slaves as 'subhuman'), to caste or caste-like systems, to subtler forms of inequality. There are diverse viewpoints regarding the definition of manual labor, and the progression from manual labor to more complex forms can be ambiguous. Authors such as Marx characterize it as simple labor, controversially proposing that all labor can be categorized as such. However, Ludwig von Mises argues that this

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2142-514: The major economic centers in Europe as they are part of EU. For example, as of 2020 Portugal is considered to be the most trending outsourcing destination as big companies like Mercedes, Google, Jaguar, Sky News, Natixis and BNP Paribas opening development centers in Lisbon and Porto, where labor costs are lower, talent comes from excellent Universities, there's availability of skills and the time zone

2193-400: The motivation for offshoring. Economists call this labor arbitrage . More recently, offshoring incentives also include access to qualified personnel abroad, in particular in technical professions, and decreasing the time to market. Jobs are added in the destination country providing the goods or services and are subtracted from the higher-cost labor country. The increased safety net costs of

2244-493: The nature of labor performed by students when training for specific professions. Ultimately, definitions of manual labor are shaped by economic and political interests, as all societies depend on some form of manual labor for their functioning. Economic competition often results in businesses trying to buy labour at the lowest possible cost (for example, through offshoring or by employing foreign workers ) or to obviate it entirely (through mechanisation and automation). There

2295-471: The past two centuries, education has become more important and more widely disseminated; but even today, not everyone can know everything, or have experience in a great number of occupations.) It has also always been the case that there was a large amount of manual labour to be done; and that much of it was simple enough to be successfully (if not masterfully) done by unskilled or semiskilled workers, which has meant that there have always been plenty of people with

2346-485: The popularity of white dress shirts worn by people in office environments. The blue collar/white collar colour scheme has socio-economic class connotations. However, this distinction has become blurred with the increasing importance of skilled labor , and the relative increase in low-paying white-collar jobs. Since many blue-collar jobs consist of mainly manual labor, educational requirements for workers are typically lower than those of white-collar workers. Often, not even

2397-446: The potential to do it. These conditions have assured the correlation's strength and persistence. Throughout human prehistory and history, wherever social class systems have developed, the social status of manual labourers has, more often than not, been low, as most physical tasks were done by peasants , serfs , slaves , indentured servants , wage slaves , or domestic servants . For example, legal scholar L. Ali Khan analyses how

2448-422: The primary ways that physical work has been accomplished. Mechanisation and automation , which reduce the need for human and animal labour in production, have existed for centuries, but it was only starting in the 18th and 19th centuries that they began to significantly expand and to change human culture. To be implemented, they require that sufficient technology exist and that its capital costs be justified by

2499-450: The project or salaried. There are a wide range of payscales for such work depending upon field of specialty and experience. The term blue collar was first used in reference to trades jobs in 1924, in an Alden, Iowa newspaper. The phrase stems from the image of manual workers wearing blue denim or chambray shirts as part of their uniforms. Industrial and manual workers often wear durable canvas or cotton clothing that may be soiled during

2550-559: The unemployed may be absorbed by the government (taxpayers) in the high-cost country or by the company doing the offshoring. Europe experienced less offshoring than the United States due to policies that applied more costs to corporations and cultural barriers. Some criteria for a job to be offshore-able are: Subcontracting in the same country would be outsourcing, but not offshoring. A company moving an internal business unit from one country to another would be offshoring or physical restructuring , but not outsourcing. A company subcontracting

2601-788: Was seen to be relatively less valuable. More recently, companies have explored nearshoring as a risk mitigation strategy for operational and supply chain weaknesses uncovered during the COVID-19 global pandemic crisis, when offshore BPOs experienced sudden closures and disruptive quarantine restrictions which hampered their ability to conduct day-to-day business operations. The complexities of offshoring stem from language and cultural differences, travel distances, workday/time zone mismatches, and greater effort for needed for establishing trust and long-term relationships. Many nearshore providers attempted to circumvent communication and project management barriers by developing new ways to align organizations. As

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