One of my favorite parts of living in Germany has been the relative lack of social hierarchy associated with one's job. I'm in a martial arts class with a mix of doctors, lawyers, musicians, carpenters, students, and (actual) garbage collectors, and not once have I noticed a stratification or class connotation in discussion during or after class. They have very different economic means of course, but "dignity and social respect" is exactly the right description for the quality they all grant each other as contributing members of society.
It's a cultural quality I've come to accept as a marker of a functional social democracy.
The obvious solution is to discard classism and extend dignity and respect to the garbage-collectors. Why shouldn't they be respected? They perform an essential service for their community.
What does that mean? Is everyone going to attend college and become coders? Who is going to collect the trash. In my home country the dominant job opportunity is subsistence farming, people still manage.