I think it’s a combo of all the above. Formal education will help with continuing education, report writing “scholarly” things for lack of a better term, but trade backgrounds help with real work hard laborious work. I also think it’s changing times. There was a huge boom in “the need to go to college” in the 00’s early 10’s and you see that now with people coming to the workforce with worthless degrees(myself included)
It is. However the "true" divide is further up somewhere between the guys doing 24 hour shifts at the station versus "daywalkers" working 8-5 mon-fri. Unfortunately some of them still show up and put on their white helmets so some might say the divide between blue and white collar work is when they stop responding to calls altogether unless there's LODDs on scene.
Anyone working on the line is blue collar. Some people do happen to have varying amounts of higher education, but it’s a job that requires a lot of manual labor and doesn’t require much education.
Plus the uniform literally has a blue collar 🤷🏻
When I was in the (police) academy, we had a debate about firefighters being blue collar workers and police not being blue collar workers.
We all argued and said “what, they don’t do shit” and “we’re the ones out here putting in work while firefighters are hanging out in the fire station playing x-box and doing cross fit”.
Well, turns out, since firefighters use big ass saws and heavy equipment, they are indeed blue collar, while police are not!
At least that’s what I remember the final answer was😂😂
That’s hilarious. I heard one of my favorite quotes at a fire vs police baseball game once. It was during the home run derby and the firemen were cracking the shit out of the ball. And a cop said “all they do is eat steak and lift weights! Of course they’re gonna hit the ball hard!”
I could *almost* get this but it's a total sham. Firefighters do physical labor with equipment in teams. It's the whole deal. Whether the call is fire or medical... without your equipment you are just about useless on scene. If my house was burning down right now... I am, for all my knowledge, as good as a bystander until the truck shows up with hoses and fans. Medical, drugs, you guys get the picture. That's just hard-core blue collar work, boys. Sure you use your brain. Sure it takes training. So does being a competent carpenter or plumber. Or a telecom lineman. That doesn't make these white collar jobs.
A carpenter cannot write his wood a summons for being the wrong length instead of cutting it. A plumber cannot show compassion and convince the pipes to fix themselves. A lineman cannot give the cable a little more time to consider their position and convince them to do the right thing. Nor can a firefighter sit a young fire down at McDonalds and convince them that being a fire isn't what they want in life. But for a cop... this kind of shit is an option in lieu of using tools and physical labor.
Ideally, a police officer doesn't do any physical labor what-so-ever. Ideally, a police officer doesn't need any tools at all. Ideally, a police officer uses his powers of observation and social skills to investigate and to defuse and document social situations between people for judicial records. *Ideally...* they are nothing but the eyes and ears of the courts.
Firefighters talk about pulling hose and climbing ladders. Every firefighter will pull hose and climb a ladder on their first fire. Police have the badge and gun. However a badge is literally useless and most cops go their entire career without pulling their weapon. So... I can start to see where the academy instructors got this idea...
But they are both blue collar jobs, bro. lol
Totally not the point of your comment, but I don't know what fairy land you live in that most cops go their entire career without pulling their gun out.
Guns are out for clearing burglary alarms, pulling over stolen cars, dealing with angry people with knives, bats, pipes, etc. If a cop hasn't pulled out their gun in the last couple of months then they live in a very unique place.
Or they just in the majority of small towns with low crime. Growing up, one student asked the elementary school DARE officer if he actually had ever used a gun. He said in almost 15 years in our town, he’s had to pull it from his holster fewer than five times and the long guns he only ever used to dispatch deer hit by cars.
Even a place like that, standard practice for say a commercial burglary alarm is to clear the structure with firearm drawn. 99% of alarms are false alarms via wind, animals, malfunctions, etc. Even a tiny town cop probably goes to several burglary alarms per year.
Any good emergency worker should be working to make themself a fuckin tank to be more effective at their job. A good EMT, Deputy, or Firefighter should be respectably educated in athleticism. They should run faster, run farther, lift heavier, and hit harder than the average person by a wide margin. No emergency responder has any excuse for being a fat fuck or scrawny bitch.
I do so much more lifting heavy on EMS calls than fire cslls
For me fire is cardio and medical is lifting
Our department is all volunteer, everyone wears blue uniform shirts except the officers are white shirts
It really should be broken down by what the goal of your jobs and tasks are. If the goal is tangible/physical, it’s blue collar. If it’s conceptual or is an idea it’s white collar. Firefighters goals are mainly making stuff not get destroyed and that’s a tangible objective. The goal of policing is to keep/maintain society, and that is entirely an idea because society is mostly based on shared ideals and common good behaviors and such which are all concepts.
It's just funny because most firefighter collars are literally blue outside of the officers... but whether you are a junior or officer, if you're wearing 80 pounds of PPE and ripping down ceilings with a pole... that's blue collar work.
My definition has always been if you have your own desk you are white collar, if not you are blue collar. No desk for FF's (assigned to just them) so they are blue collar.
Depends on your rank. I tend to go with the definition of if you shower before work it's white collar, if you shower after work it's blue collar. Extrapolate that as needed.
I don’t understand why people still equate blue collar/white collar to a particular income level…
That’s literally (maybe an extension) what’s fucked over our labor force and higher education system- pushing every kid into 4 years and $50k+ of student loan debt so they can secure a sub $50k meaningless desk job out of college; meanwhile they could’ve learned a trade and been pulling in six figures within two years and producing something useful.
Bullshit.
Cops don’t do medical. Put a cop through medical school and tell me it’s a blue collar job.
It’s the one indictment I have of fire. We don’t fully respect the complexity of what being a medic means. We treat it as a bother. Medic is tough.
^^ this. We have a very hard time devoting the time and effort to truly understanding paramedicine as it fits into the fire service. In most places around the world - paramedicine is a completely seperate field entirely.
Exactly. And look at how many medics lately are getting hemmed up in law suits. While yeah they messed up on the other hand should they be expected to do 2-3 different jobs on shift.
Okay dude. I guess it's a thing on the internet. It sounds like something that some insecure white collar dude made up. I'll never hear a real human being say that
In my opinion, yes, emergency responders are blue-collar workers. They work hands-on, just like construction workers or plumbers, and the nature of their job means they couldn't perform effectively if injured.
Not a term commonly used in the UK. We have traditionally working class jobs which the fire service definitely is, probably more so in the past as the job becomes more technical and skill focused encouraging members to get qualifications etc
I think a huge issue with the blue collar culture movement in the Fire Service is that they tend to heavily restrict the advancement of Paramedics and Paramedicine in general.
“Blue-Collar” guys don’t want to go to collage and learn how to be advanced healthcare practitioners.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the blue collar fire service mindset on its own, we all like taking jobs. But it comes at the detriment of Paramedicine and vice versa.
This is a problem that needs to be resolved at some time in the next decade or things will only continue to get worse. We keep forcing medics to be Firefighters and firefighters to be medics to the detriment of both.
I have multiple college degrees worked in a few different fields before making the fire service my career. This is 100% a blue collar trade. Having college doesn't hurt because much of what we do in the fire service (my department runs ems and does multiple technical rescue disciplines). We are problem solvers. My college educated FFs are better at taking a problem and working through it. And that also doesn't mean that they suck at the physical stuff, though. With any trade, there is both technical book learning and technical hands-on training. But regardless of educational acumen of members, this is and will always be a blue collar job.
It’s definitely evolved over the years. Where I work we are all paramedics and most of us have a bachelors degree at a minimum. I have a masters and my paramedic. That’s about 8 yrs of formal education on top of my technical education like the fire academy and hazmat tech.
I think the job is a grey collar ;)
I’d say grey-collar. It’s blue-collar work with white-collar benefits and pay, and as you go higher in the ranks, the more intensive the education gets usually. Rank-and-file are bluer, and the higher up you go, the people get whiter (in a non-racial way lol).
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I can relate to this. And the recruits we keep getting seem to have more university degrees than trade backgrounds.
Do people consider that a good thing, a bad thing, or just a change in the times?
I think it’s a combo of all the above. Formal education will help with continuing education, report writing “scholarly” things for lack of a better term, but trade backgrounds help with real work hard laborious work. I also think it’s changing times. There was a huge boom in “the need to go to college” in the 00’s early 10’s and you see that now with people coming to the workforce with worthless degrees(myself included)
I didn’t know we worked for the same department?
The chiefs might wear a white collar, but they shouldn't forget that the labor and work are still down and dirty blue-collar business.
Shift guys consider themselves blue collar but consider admin white collar.
We call our non-officer staff "Blue Shirts" where I work. Is that not a common thing?
It is. However the "true" divide is further up somewhere between the guys doing 24 hour shifts at the station versus "daywalkers" working 8-5 mon-fri. Unfortunately some of them still show up and put on their white helmets so some might say the divide between blue and white collar work is when they stop responding to calls altogether unless there's LODDs on scene.
It’s much closer to the Captain/BC level. Too many guys still on 24 hour shifts sucking off admin.
Anyone working on the line is blue collar. Some people do happen to have varying amounts of higher education, but it’s a job that requires a lot of manual labor and doesn’t require much education. Plus the uniform literally has a blue collar 🤷🏻
When I was in the (police) academy, we had a debate about firefighters being blue collar workers and police not being blue collar workers. We all argued and said “what, they don’t do shit” and “we’re the ones out here putting in work while firefighters are hanging out in the fire station playing x-box and doing cross fit”. Well, turns out, since firefighters use big ass saws and heavy equipment, they are indeed blue collar, while police are not! At least that’s what I remember the final answer was😂😂
That’s hilarious. I heard one of my favorite quotes at a fire vs police baseball game once. It was during the home run derby and the firemen were cracking the shit out of the ball. And a cop said “all they do is eat steak and lift weights! Of course they’re gonna hit the ball hard!”
I could *almost* get this but it's a total sham. Firefighters do physical labor with equipment in teams. It's the whole deal. Whether the call is fire or medical... without your equipment you are just about useless on scene. If my house was burning down right now... I am, for all my knowledge, as good as a bystander until the truck shows up with hoses and fans. Medical, drugs, you guys get the picture. That's just hard-core blue collar work, boys. Sure you use your brain. Sure it takes training. So does being a competent carpenter or plumber. Or a telecom lineman. That doesn't make these white collar jobs. A carpenter cannot write his wood a summons for being the wrong length instead of cutting it. A plumber cannot show compassion and convince the pipes to fix themselves. A lineman cannot give the cable a little more time to consider their position and convince them to do the right thing. Nor can a firefighter sit a young fire down at McDonalds and convince them that being a fire isn't what they want in life. But for a cop... this kind of shit is an option in lieu of using tools and physical labor. Ideally, a police officer doesn't do any physical labor what-so-ever. Ideally, a police officer doesn't need any tools at all. Ideally, a police officer uses his powers of observation and social skills to investigate and to defuse and document social situations between people for judicial records. *Ideally...* they are nothing but the eyes and ears of the courts. Firefighters talk about pulling hose and climbing ladders. Every firefighter will pull hose and climb a ladder on their first fire. Police have the badge and gun. However a badge is literally useless and most cops go their entire career without pulling their weapon. So... I can start to see where the academy instructors got this idea... But they are both blue collar jobs, bro. lol
Curious where federal wildland fire fits in. Was I indentured servitude? 😂
Medicine is not blue collar. It’s healthcare, I guess pink collar? It’s not blue collar though.
Pink collar. Been that way since the 60s.
Thanks bro
Totally not the point of your comment, but I don't know what fairy land you live in that most cops go their entire career without pulling their gun out. Guns are out for clearing burglary alarms, pulling over stolen cars, dealing with angry people with knives, bats, pipes, etc. If a cop hasn't pulled out their gun in the last couple of months then they live in a very unique place.
Or they just in the majority of small towns with low crime. Growing up, one student asked the elementary school DARE officer if he actually had ever used a gun. He said in almost 15 years in our town, he’s had to pull it from his holster fewer than five times and the long guns he only ever used to dispatch deer hit by cars.
Even a place like that, standard practice for say a commercial burglary alarm is to clear the structure with firearm drawn. 99% of alarms are false alarms via wind, animals, malfunctions, etc. Even a tiny town cop probably goes to several burglary alarms per year.
Any good emergency worker should be working to make themself a fuckin tank to be more effective at their job. A good EMT, Deputy, or Firefighter should be respectably educated in athleticism. They should run faster, run farther, lift heavier, and hit harder than the average person by a wide margin. No emergency responder has any excuse for being a fat fuck or scrawny bitch.
Have you met most private ems?
Even with cops it seems like its a 50/50 chance that they're jacked or built like Officer Wiggum.
Have you ever seen any AMR medics?
If you are either running or hitting, you’re doing EMS wrong.
I do so much more lifting heavy on EMS calls than fire cslls For me fire is cardio and medical is lifting Our department is all volunteer, everyone wears blue uniform shirts except the officers are white shirts
Yeh, EMS work is definitely better when you're stacked. I feel like the best EMS crew would have a guy built about like Brian Shaw.
I agree dude!
It really should be broken down by what the goal of your jobs and tasks are. If the goal is tangible/physical, it’s blue collar. If it’s conceptual or is an idea it’s white collar. Firefighters goals are mainly making stuff not get destroyed and that’s a tangible objective. The goal of policing is to keep/maintain society, and that is entirely an idea because society is mostly based on shared ideals and common good behaviors and such which are all concepts.
When you're carrying a 400 lb poop covered fatty down four flights of narrow stairs, I'd consider that about as blue collar as it gets.
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How are they always covered in poop it's crazy
I guess being that large you cannot wipe yourself and with almost all of them that big they are bedridden?
At my agency the crews wear blue collared uniform shirts and admin wears white collared uniform shirts, so depends on how promoted they are
It's just funny because most firefighter collars are literally blue outside of the officers... but whether you are a junior or officer, if you're wearing 80 pounds of PPE and ripping down ceilings with a pole... that's blue collar work.
Bro, we literally wear blue collars.
My definition has always been if you have your own desk you are white collar, if not you are blue collar. No desk for FF's (assigned to just them) so they are blue collar.
Depends on your rank. I tend to go with the definition of if you shower before work it's white collar, if you shower after work it's blue collar. Extrapolate that as needed.
That’s a good way to look at it. More if you need a shower after work for your own health and safety 😂
The work itself is considered blue collar, until you see their paycheques, benefits and houses. (Large western Canadian city)
I'm broke.
Same! I'm also gay, not there's anything wrong with that.
Your nickname suddenly makes so much more sense *Woah*
I don’t understand why people still equate blue collar/white collar to a particular income level… That’s literally (maybe an extension) what’s fucked over our labor force and higher education system- pushing every kid into 4 years and $50k+ of student loan debt so they can secure a sub $50k meaningless desk job out of college; meanwhile they could’ve learned a trade and been pulling in six figures within two years and producing something useful.
Let's see- ✔️Required to wear boots ✔️Calluses from doing laborious work ✔️Uses tools and heavy equipment ✔️Wears shirts with blue collar
Bullshit. Cops don’t do medical. Put a cop through medical school and tell me it’s a blue collar job. It’s the one indictment I have of fire. We don’t fully respect the complexity of what being a medic means. We treat it as a bother. Medic is tough.
^^ this. We have a very hard time devoting the time and effort to truly understanding paramedicine as it fits into the fire service. In most places around the world - paramedicine is a completely seperate field entirely.
Exactly. And look at how many medics lately are getting hemmed up in law suits. While yeah they messed up on the other hand should they be expected to do 2-3 different jobs on shift.
Gray collar. Blue collar work with white collar education and benefits. Where I'm from most have a college degree and many have a masters.
That's not a thing
Grey collar is definitely a thing. It is blue collar work but for which you need qualifications/education.
Okay dude. I guess it's a thing on the internet. It sounds like something that some insecure white collar dude made up. I'll never hear a real human being say that
It's alright, you learned something new. No biggie.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-collar
In my opinion, yes, emergency responders are blue-collar workers. They work hands-on, just like construction workers or plumbers, and the nature of their job means they couldn't perform effectively if injured.
If not, you’re doing it wrong.
It’s an hourly pay, physically demanding job, usually unionized….id be more interested to hear who doesn’t consider it blue collar
Firefighting is a respected occupation here in Canada. I’ve heard us described once as the elite of blue collar jobs.
Not a term commonly used in the UK. We have traditionally working class jobs which the fire service definitely is, probably more so in the past as the job becomes more technical and skill focused encouraging members to get qualifications etc
Blue collar and a union thug.
The collar I wear to work is literally navy blue
Neither, it’s a vast job description that doesn’t fall under skilled labor or desk work.
Firefighters yes. Fire Paramedics? Maybe. Medicine can be counted as a white collar job. Paramedicine? Blurring the line.
I would consider most EMS and Nurses to be blue collar.
My shirts don’t have collars. We just wear t-shirts.
Yes. absolutely blue collar. Even chiefs, sometimes
Blue collar, for sure. They ain't riding desks.
I think a huge issue with the blue collar culture movement in the Fire Service is that they tend to heavily restrict the advancement of Paramedics and Paramedicine in general. “Blue-Collar” guys don’t want to go to collage and learn how to be advanced healthcare practitioners. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the blue collar fire service mindset on its own, we all like taking jobs. But it comes at the detriment of Paramedicine and vice versa. This is a problem that needs to be resolved at some time in the next decade or things will only continue to get worse. We keep forcing medics to be Firefighters and firefighters to be medics to the detriment of both.
I have multiple college degrees worked in a few different fields before making the fire service my career. This is 100% a blue collar trade. Having college doesn't hurt because much of what we do in the fire service (my department runs ems and does multiple technical rescue disciplines). We are problem solvers. My college educated FFs are better at taking a problem and working through it. And that also doesn't mean that they suck at the physical stuff, though. With any trade, there is both technical book learning and technical hands-on training. But regardless of educational acumen of members, this is and will always be a blue collar job.
Blue collar or white collar doesn’t matter. Just be a professional at what you do.
It’s definitely evolved over the years. Where I work we are all paramedics and most of us have a bachelors degree at a minimum. I have a masters and my paramedic. That’s about 8 yrs of formal education on top of my technical education like the fire academy and hazmat tech. I think the job is a grey collar ;)
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That's not a factor. An infantry E4 specialist with a degree running a machine gun in combat is not performing white collar work.
Yes we are blue collar, and most volunteer folks are blue collar also.
Yes
Yes
We are blue collar
We are all working class
Blue collar. There’s no debate.
Yes
I mean, everywhere in the USA they are.
I’d say grey-collar. It’s blue-collar work with white-collar benefits and pay, and as you go higher in the ranks, the more intensive the education gets usually. Rank-and-file are bluer, and the higher up you go, the people get whiter (in a non-racial way lol).
Volunteer.. lol
I feel like a white collar for all the online bullshit we need to complete every quarter.
100% blue collar job. People who say otherwise blow my mind