Originally published here.
In all west-European countries the participation of women and ethnic minorities and/or more recent immigrants in the labour market has increased. This increase has not overcome, however, enduring patterns of labour market segregation, whereby women and ethnic minorities/immigrants are confined to particular segments of the labour market. Too often, this means their exclusion from or under representation in the most attractive jobs and occupations. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the construction sector.
Both at the national and European level, overcoming labour market segregation has been established as a core principle of social and economic policies. These have been driven by two complementary concerns: equality of opportunities and economic considerations. Labour market segregation is responsible for labour market inefficiencies, reducing the ability to adapt to changes in supply and demand and excluding many of the best suited and most skilled people from those occupations where they would be the most productive.
Hence, reducing segregation plays a major role in policies aimed at favouring job matching, averting bottlenecks in labour supply, and ensuring the competitiveness of the European economies (EC 2001). This article seeks to account for differences in the nature and extent of female and ethnic minority and/or immigrant participation in the construction industry in five European countries: Britain, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. It draws on a European Community-funded project entitled ‘Overcoming Marginalisation: structural obstacles and openings to integration in strongly segregated sectors’.
Combining both quantitative and qualitative research techniques, including in-depth, structured interviews with companies, social partners and government, this project focused on the structural obstacles to inclusion of both groups in three other sectors (information, health, printing) as well as construction (Marginalisation group 2003). As in the project, here we are essentially concerned with manual occupations and with demand-side, structural obstacles to inclusion relating to training, the wage structure, and recruitment. This cross-national comparison is of particular interest due to the existence of very different systems of national and sectoral regulation in these five countries (Boyer and Gaillard 2002).
Construction industries in the advanced capitalist economies have taken divergent paths in response to the common challenges of turbulence, intensified competition, ageing labour forces, and the industry’s continued association with ‘3D’ (dirty, dangerous, and degrading) jobs (Bosch and Phillips 2003).
Two models of development can be distinguished: first, the more regulated or coordinated construction industries, which tend to be ‘capital-intensive, human-capital intensive, and technologically dynamic’ and characterised by intense state and and/or sectoral involvement in training and labour market coordination; and second, the low-wage, low-skill, low-tech construction industries on a ‘low track’ path of development characterised by extensive subcontracting, ‘atypical’ forms of employment (temporary and/or agency workers, self-employment, and an often substantial informal labour market), and high labour turnover.
The customs, institutions and the regulatory framework existing in different sectors and countries determine the path taken by the industry. A further distinction can be made between the different labour processes associated with ‘low’ and ‘high track’ approaches. The ‘low track’ path of Italy, Spain and, to an extent, Britain, exhibits strong craft characteristics whereby emphasis is laid on selling the product of labour associated with a particular trade (Clarke and Wall 2000). As a result, the traditional apprenticeship and learning on the job survive as the main means of training, wages tend to be output-based and labour employed casually from one project to another rather than by firm, firms are small and self-employment high.
In contrast, in the more ‘high track’ construction sectors of Denmark and the Netherlands qualifications and formal training are essential, wages are set on the basis of collective agreements, employment is generally by firm and direct. Our choice of countries is intended to identify and distinguish between the exclusionary and inclusionary mechanisms that persist in both the more and the less coordinated and regulated – the craft and the industrial – settings, as well as policies that may be effective in overcoming them.
Regulation and integration are paradoxical concepts. On the one hand, the suggestion is that those countries with an industrial, regulated and training approach are potentially more inclusive than those with a craft, unregulated and production approach. Thus in Denmark and the Netherlands women and ethnic minorities depend more on qualifications for entry, so that the education and training system plays a pivotal role in inclusion. However, in spite of this, only a tiny proportion of women and ethnic minorities are to be found in construction in these countries, as well as in Britain, though the proportion in training, especially on college-based routes, is higher than those in employment.
On the other hand, however, we found that in the deregulated settings of Italy and Spain there are proportionately more ethnic minorities to be found, but these are trapped in the lowest segments of the construction labour market. What is significant here is that in these countries these segments are considerably more extended than in the northern countries of Denmark and the Netherlands, given their ‘low track’ path of development. Therefore the implication is that ethnic minorities are able to acquire training and jobs but only of the worst kind. For women this is not the case: in these southern countries they are almost totally absent.
The indication is thatin both the more and less regulated countries the key moment of exclusion comes when both groups try to enter the labour market, whether for training and work experience in Britain, the Netherlands, and Denmark, or for jobs in Spain and Italy. Our research identified various exclusionary mechanisms. It indicated, first, that many ethnic minorities drop-out from official training programmes. Second, output-based wage structures act as a deterrent to women’s entry and as a means of vertical segregation for ethnic minorities. Third, the informal methods of recruitment and selection in all countries and the reliance on established white male social networks reinforce the exclusion of both groups.
This highlights the importance of other supply- and demand-side factors in excluding women and ethnic minorities from construction. These include the relatively low status of the industry with hard working conditions and strictly defined working hours, the persistence of a ‘macho’ work culture, discrimination and harassment, and lack of work and family policies, realities which might well explain why so few women or ethnic minorities pursue the status of a career in the industry.
In the case of many more recent arrivals, current restrictive immigration regimes represent a form of “institutional discrimination” confining them to the ‘bad jobs’ of construction (Solé 2001:13). It is their failure to overcome these obstacles that explain the meagre results of the few existing active labour market policies aimed at women and ethnic minorities. Much can be done through encouraging both groups to enter the industry through targeted and special training provision, which has at least enabled small groups of women and ethnic minorities to acquire a position in the ‘primary’ segments of the labour market in Denmark and the Netherlands.
But, as the example of local authority Direct Labour Organizations in the UK highlights, the commitment of employers is essential, as it is they who are responsible for implementing equal opportunities policies in recruitment, pay and working conditions. Equal opportunity policies have been shown to play an important role in developing a productive system of construction in the UK (Rubery et al 2003).
Vital too is the commitment of the trade unions who play key roles in the training system - especially in Denmark and the Netherlands where it is critical for entry, in upholding often exclusive wage systems, in improving employment conditions, and in representing the interests of employees above all those who are disadvantaged. A recent survey has indicated the general reluctance by the social partners in construction throughout Europe to address obstacles to inclusion such as discriminatory recruitment processes in a proactive way (Clarke et al 2005).
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the national and European authorities and the social partners in construction is to overcome this reluctance and to ensure that regulation does not mean exclusion of those whose participation in the labour market is extending but equality of access and of employment conditions. The reasons for doing so are not just social, but also economic, as the future competitiveness of the European construction industry may well depend on its ability to make effective use of the labour of those groups currently excluded from full and equitable participation in the industry.
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