This process allowed increasing numbers of what might traditionally be classified as working-class people to assume the lifestyle and individualistic values of the so-called middle classes and hence reject commitment to collective social and economic goals.
[1] Charles E. Hurst [2] describes this change to be a result of the post-industrialization of society, in which there are far fewer manual labor jobs, which is the main classification of blue-collar work.
With post-industrialization, former upper-level blue-collar workers are moving to white-collar work because of the decreased availability and prestige of manual labor jobs.
The topic was widely discussed in academic circles in the 1960s following the publication of The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure ISBN 0-521-09533-6 by John H. Goldthorpe in 1963.
The situation in Great Britain at the time is described in the book Must Labour Lose?, written by Mark Abrams and Richard Rose.