Should we bother with blue-collar careers?

Answer 1: No. Blue-collar workers don't have careers, they have jobs. Jobs involve limited tasks and responsibilities. Jobs tend not to be connected to an ascending staircase (i.e., as in the normative model). At best, they make sense as “work histories,” not as careers like professionals or managers have.

Answer 2: Yes. But toss out the normative, achievement-oriented model of careers. Develop instead an inclusive perspective that transcends the color of the collar and, in the process, seeks similarity in work experience over time while helping to explain differences. Insert an objective definition or a set of dimensions that allow for horizontal as well as vertical mobility, that contrast externally defined tasks or responsibilities with internally generated rationales for a history of jobs, and that introduce parallel sequences, like adult development, life cycles, or family stages.

It is tempting to go with the first answer and be done with the topic. After all, despite the persistent theme of human resource development in the management literature, few organizations subscribe in practice to the idea that low-level, nonsupervisory employees have or even want careers. Certainly most organizations provide reasonably clear steps or gradations in jobs that can be construed as paths of upward mobility. But quite often the training necessary for climbing the organizational staircase is inadequate or inaccessible, external credentialing is required, or some other obstacle (e.g., family, ability, individual preference) intervenes to make the staircase look like a series of cliffs each separated by a deep crevasse.