Gold Collar Worker (GCW) is a neologism used to define a new tier of (young) workers who occupy high performance jobs in sectors based on the knowledge economy.

For further reading, perhaps you can find this publication useful:

Buttoning up the gold collar—The child in neoliberal visions of early education and care by O Kaščák, B Pupala - Human Affairs, 2013 - Springer

Agree with @K. C. LOW

Do these so called gold collar workers create short-term happiness (e.g. based on economy and material benefits) or long-term happiness (e.g. based on spiritual values), and for how many people?

Dear Debi

Once there was a real distinction in clothing between blue-collar workers and white-collar workers out of which the figurative sense of manual versus clerical staff evolved. Recently the term pink-collar worker has been invented to describe the female equivalent of the (assumed male) blue-collar worker, which is particularly applied to women who assemble electronic equipment and run back-office data-entry systems (the term may have originated in the title of a book by Louise Kapp Howe in 1977). More recent still are gold-collar workers, highly-skilled individuals who know a great deal about several areas of their company’s work, are frequently crucial to its continuing profitability, and who — it is argued — must be managed by techniques that take their special qualities into account. The term was reportedly invented by Professor Robert E Kelley of Carnegie Mellon University, and forms the title of his 1985 book on managing this new type of employee. He also uses the term gold-collar manager for those who supervise them.

source:

World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2014

Instead of commenting I'd like to share comment from one of my professional forums where I am member. I describes exactly what can happen if some GCW gets high level and decision making position in knowledge based area but without underlying knowledge end experience.

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"These forums appear to be channelling into a common theme. "Ask questions and bluff your way to an interview". God help our industry if these people ask fundamental questions and expect (worse) are nominated for the position. All our professional work within our networks suddenly isn't worth a cracker.

Yes XXX, ask YYYY that question, and anyone else putting such rudimentary questions to this and other forums.

Get rid of these parasites realising telecommunications as another branch to pick allowing access to a lucrative career with dearth background knowledge, or very little of same.

My reply may seem too harsh and to some, offensive, however, I can`t apply to be a brain surgeon utilising the same method can I ?"

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One more collateral term is "no-collar worker" i.e. the Silicon Valley employee in the software industry who wear T-shirt and their shirt has No-Collar. Does this term have the same meaning as that of gold collar or pink collar?

Dear Marcel,

You asked a poetic question. The gold means merely the mainstream society’s evaluation (economy and (pseudo) material benefits). Where and when has been long-term happiness (spiritual values) ever estimated?

Dear KC Low

In a high technology industry there are even support staff people who provide ancillary service to the line people. Perhaps, they are not gold collar workers. So we need to change the meaning away from employment in an industry as such. Rather we can focus on the importance of the work that the high profile worker is performing.

Hi,

I cannot see any solid reason to distinguish labor into different collar colors. These categorizations are otiose except putting some psychological obstacles such as glass ceiling. Hope is most important and powerful motivation for workers. Any effort jeopardizing perceived hope in any organization feeds entropy.

Regards.

'Gold Collar' quite a fancy term. But, it may lead to widen the gap between superior worker and inferior workers in a common work space.

Dear Uftuk and Dara Singh

Hope you understand that we are not prescribing in a normative sense that we should classify workers into these categories. Rather we are trying to analyse this division which analysts and researchers have used. That is how any scientific exercise should be done. I am not saying whether this is good or bad. But we wish to know what specifically is the sense in which researchers are using the term.

Dear Debi,

I have never said that you promote these kind of classifications. I have just decleared my opinion. Thanx.

I find this term gold collar very similar to what talent mangement literature says about talent

In fact anyone who is working in a high technology with high performance industry is a gold collar worker.

Yes, Harshita. You are right. To some extent, we can see every employee who can be categorized as talent can also be loosely described as a gold-collared worker.