George Meany, the cigar chomping anti-communist leader of America’s unions, was fond of saying that “you cannot have a successful economy built on everyone doing everyone else’s laundry.” Meaney’s line was a reflection of the age – when an “honest” or “real” job meant a blue collar job, and a bloke’s job at that.

Decades on, I hear the faint echo of Meany, but in reverse – an offhand dismissal of exactly the sort of industrial jobs Meaney would have lauded, and by extension the people who do them and the communities that rely on them. Shamefully some commentators, including Labor figures like Mark Latham, routinely deride industrial jobs as some sort of ghetto from which people have to be liberated. In doing so, they ignore the incredibly important role that decent industrial jobs have played in lifting the living standards of working class people across the developed world, and in conjunction with a decent social wage, facilitating social mobility.

And now, another huge chunk of them are disappearing.

The loss of 2,900 direct Holden jobs is just the start. Around 50,000 will go from the supply chain. This doesn’t count the effects outside the automotive sector, where an estimated 200,000 jobs are at risk: the spending of auto workers is the income of many other businesses across the country. The job losses will happen in big lumps and are clustered in northern Adelaide and suburban Melbourne, amplifying the effect on communities. The future of Toyota, now alone at the top of a supply chain that until recently supported four manufacturers, is also in serious doubt.

Yet as the Holden tragedy unfolded, these jobs were talked about as relics of Australia’s past, and the workers themselves blamed. On social media, self-styled progressives snarked about “subsidies” and looked down their noses at the jobs of people who build cars for “bogans”. Government backbenchers tweeted that Holden was paying workers “more than they should” because they weren’t on minimum award wages. Government figures got all macho about protectionism, and even blamed the carbon price (which added the princely sum of less than 50 bucks to a car). Op-eds writers declared the workers to be overpaid and feather-bedded.

By Wednesday afternoon, Holden had made its announcement and the TV crews were out filming what amounts to nauseating job-loss porn, vox-popping distressed workers making a run for the car park at knock-off.

Let’s be clear. The job losses are not the fault of the skilled and productive workforce. It was not those workers’ fault that our national government won’t do what every other government with an auto sector does. It was not those workers’ fault that the plant owners preferred to sweat the archaic capital until it fell apart rather than invest in new technology and higher skills. It was not those workers’ fault that managers didn’t see the market shift away from family sedans to small cars and SUVs. And the workers aren’t at fault because they organised and got themselves decent wages and conditions.

While Holden workers this year made painful concessions to try to save their jobs, their wages weren’t the issue. In this part of the manufacturing sector, wages are only about 20% of expenses. The real issue has been the value of the Australian dollar, which has risen about 50% against both the Japanese yen and the US dollar. Meanwhile, the South Korean won has risen only around 6%. Even huge cuts in nominal wages would have been small bore stuff in this context. This hasn’t stopped workers and unions being blamed.

Yes, the jobs at Holden are mainly permanent jobs paying a decent wage. Good. What’s the problem with skilled full-time factory workers being entitled to a bit of security and ability to buy a house? And yes, the jobs at Holden are union jobs. Good. What’s the problem with workers having a say about their wages, work and safety, a bit of power over their lives?

The question is: what’s next? What secure, decently paid place do these workers, and others, find in the labour market?

We routinely hear that penalty rates make low-wage service jobs “uncompetitive”, as if brunch can be served here or in Asia. This week, poorly paid childcare workers were told “the right thing to do” was to hand back a modest pay rise. White collar jobs are routinely offshored by the thousand, with little coverage. Cuts to public service jobs, by the tens of thousands, are announced in an incredibly cavalier fashion, as if the work and the workers themselves don’t matter.

Change is inevitable. Structural change in our economy is inevitable. But we need to deal with its causes and consequences properly. Shared prosperity won’t happen by accident. And a big business driven agenda that cuts their taxes and everybody else’s wages certainly won’t do it.

There is some truth buried within Meany’s old line. You cannot have a successful economy without diversity. If we accept an economy where the only solidly supported pillars are Bank HQs in Sydney and mines in WA and Queensland, it will condemn most Australians to a future where our standard of living falls, a future of economic insecurity and anxiety.

We still need to grow up a bit. Not sneering at other people’s jobs and wages would be a good start.