Thank you for sharing. Now the other half of the little secret:
Blue collar workers are not like that.
The people you described didn't turn out to be blue collar workers. They were sent to school with that intent, but they didn't want to be there, and if they got jobs, they lasted 6 months at the outside.
Real blue collar workers work hard, and raise families to respect work. These are the people I know, many of them struggling to give their children a better life, or struggling to take care of their aging parents, or both. They may not be especially well-educated, but they care about other people in a way that you obviously do not.