The Flexibility of Recruitment in the Construction Industry: Formalisation or Re-Casualisation?

Abstract

Common sense views of the construction industry tend to characterise its labour market processes as haphazard, if not anarchic, and requiring reform through formalisation. In contrast, a sociological perspective might point to the possibility of an underlying rationality beneath the apparent confusion. Industry data suggest a growing degree of casualism in construction, in the sense that employers and self-employed have become a significantly larger proportion of the overall workforce. These changes form the background to a discussion of labour recruitment practices on large construction sites, using data drawn from empirical investigation. In addition, the question of the relationship between recruitment practices and strategies of managerial control will also be confronted. Such an analysis would have to take into account the possibility that construction firms face distinctive problems in relation to the recruitment and subsequent control of their workforce that stem from, for example, the fact that the product is immobile, and the firm must form a series of temporary organisations at the point of consumption. This implies that the firm may not be able to draw upon the full range of control and recruitment devices available to `static' firms in a conventional and familiar labour market.