Work And Labor Relations In The Construction Industry

The need for a skilled, motivated and effective workforce is fundamental to the creation of the built environment across the world. Known in so many places for a tendency to informal and casual working practices, for the sometimes abusive use of migrant labor, for gendered male employment and for a neglect of the essentials of health and safety, the industry, its managers and its workforce face multiple challenges. This book brings an international lens to address those challenges, looking particularly at the diverse ways in which answers have been found to manage safe and productive employment practices and effective employment relations within the framework of client demands for timely and cost-effective project completions. Whilst context, history and contractual frameworks may all militate against a careful attention to human resource issues this makes them even more deserving of attention. Work and Labor Relations in Construction aims to share understanding of best practice in the industries associated with construction and related activities, recognizing that effective work organization and good standards of employee relations will vary from one location to another. It acknowledges the real difficulties encountered by workers in parts of the developing world and the quest for improvement and awareness of some of the worst hazards and current practices. This book is both critical and analytical in approach and seeks to alert readers to the need for change. Aimed at addressing practical issues within the construction industry from a theoretical and empirical standpoint, it will be of value to those interested in the built environment, employment relations and human resource management.

The American construction industry, reponsible for nearly 4% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, directly employs over five million people and provides millions of additional support jobs in related fields. This book provides an introductory overview of the economic aspects of the industry, including the historical development of building activity from earliest times to modern day market-based construction, including the work of individual artisans to complex construction unions. The book explores current trends in labor force participation; the measurement of industry performance; the determinants of investment; government involvement; competition; wage determination; training; and worker safety.

Under Construction offers a unique examination of organization and work in the construction industry. Synthesizing organizational and labor relations orientations, it develops a comprehensive sociological perspective on work relations in construction. Silver examines the effects of local market conditions, employers' demands, and trade union activities on the daily lives of workers—skilled as well as unskilled. The book also challenges popular myths about construction work and the building trades with analyses of construction sites, hiring practices, and workers' reactions to the conditions of their work. Under Construction powerfully demonstrates the need for new industrial approaches by concluding with a series of practical alternatives to current practices in the industry's housing sector.

The incidence of industrial conflict and the nature of workplace industrial relations have occupied a central place in public and academic commentary on British society. Debate about the role of the trade unions in the state, the degree of authority that the unions can and should exercise over their members, the desirability of a legal framework for collective agreements, the nature of rank and file militancy and the means and techniques of re-establishing employers' authority over the work in the face of an expanded workers' frontier of control all lie at the heart of the social crisis that marked British society from the end of the 1960s.