Red-collar workers
Topic: Primary Activities: Gathering, Pastoralism, Agriculture and Mining · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 4 "Primary Activities"
Meaning
Red-collar workers are people who do primary work, such as hunting, gathering, herding, fishing, forestry, farming and mining. NCERT gives them this name because their work is done outdoors. Other "collar" colours describe other kinds of work. In a developing country like India, a large share of workers are red-collar workers. As a country grows richer, the share of these workers falls.
Example
Coal miners in the Jharia coalfield of Jharkhand are red-collar workers. So are fishers on the Kerala coast and wheat farmers in Punjab.
Don't confuse with
- Blue-collar workers: they do manual work in factories and industry (secondary activities), not work that takes resources straight from nature.
- White-collar workers: they do office and professional work in the service sector.