[E JOB ALONE 'ENDI the contract price for…]

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E JOB ALONE 'ENDI the contract price for profit.

To do this, he skimps on materials, employs the smallest number of craftsmen possible, cuts every corner in construction, and tries to hide defects rather than put them right.

At the design stage necessary checks are omitted to cut costs. These result in unsafe construction which may collapse either on building workers (e.g. Milford Haven bridge) or on the unfortunate final occupants (e.g. the Ronan Point high rise flats).

Only publicly controlled Building Standards give any protection to workers against even lower and more dangerous standards.

Standards too low

As it is, the pressure from contractors for cheap and easy construction techniques has led to many standards being reduced or set too low.

Everyone knows that modern council houses have a higher quality of construction, and larger rooms than comparable private construction.

But even in these the standards for noise and heat insulation are far too low.

These standards should be for workers to determine. It is they who will have to live in the houses.

Similarly for institutional buildings such as community centres, hospitals, and schools: committees of workers should be able to assess what is required in terms of space, quality, and facilities.

Inadequate They should have the advice and assistance of designers and of the social workers, hospital workers or teachers who will use the buildings. • One of to cut costs is safety precautions.

. Every year over two hundred building workers are killed and 40,000 seriously injured in accidents most of which are directly due to inadequate safety.

"Forseeable"

The Health and Safety Executive estimate in report that 88 out of 100 accidents were "reasonably forseeable.

In other words they resulted from an obvious breach of known safety rules.

One example given about ladder accidents:

"The principal cause of ladder accidents is failure to tie or to foot satisfactorily the ladder. Reasons given are that tie points are either not conveniently placed or that cost was the decisive factor in not tying or footing the ladder.

The Health and Safety at Work Act makes it mandatory for employers to form safety committees and appoint safety officers from among their workers.

Difficult to unionise This is unlikely to occur on many building sites. The reason is the low level of unionisation outside of local authority building. departments.

By its nature, construction is a difficult industry to unionise. Projects last a relatively short time and employ different types of labour at different stages.

This means that workers are constantly moving from one site to another. Construction firms avoid employing many direct workers, prefering instead to hire sub-contractors for a specific job or period of time.

This reduces their responsibilities in terms of health and safety, sick pay, holiday pay and finding new employment of a job. .

Because of these savings they can afford to pay subcontract workers considerably more than direct workers.

This in turn encourages building workers to go subcontract.

On most building sites, therefore, a majority of workers do not work for the main contractor, and cannot benefit from union negotiations on pay or other conditions.

They have no protection against injury, sickness; or industrial disease, and no chance to fight for continuous employment.

The only way this situation can be ended is by a co-ordinated campaign of building and other workers.

Workers in unionised factories should insist that building workers on projects within their site are directly employed and unionised.

This should include all supervisory and technical staff. Workers in the supplier industries have particular role to play.

The supply industry is much more heavily unionised. A supply workers' committee in reinforcement, concrete or brickwork could black supplies to non-unionised sites. Transport drivers could assist in a similar way.

Direct Labour One area of the construction industry shows the beginnings of an alternative for building workers.

It also shows the impossibility of a piecemeal solution to the problems of construction.

This area is the Direct Labour departments of local district councils.

These departments carry out the repair and modernisation of council houses, and sometimes new building as well.

They are mostly completely unionised and have much more adequate working.conditions, training facilities and safety precautions.

The standard of their out the work.

This is because work can be planned effectively and profits are retained within the council finances.

But they suffer obvious problems because of the jungle outside.

Wages are low because basic rates reflect the existence of competition from sub-contractors.

In fact, some direct labour organisations have had sharp fights to stop the infiltration of sub-contractors onto their sites.

They have to bear more of the cost of training, and at the end of their training many skilled craftsmen are lured away by higher rates of pay on non-union sites.

And the constant pressure from private builders for their abolition has succeeded in preventing them tendering for work outside the sphere of council housing, and has forced them to tender for council work in competition with private builders for council housing.

Where previously DLO's acted as a service department which estimated the work but finally charged for just what was necessary, now they act as profit making departments who tender and then have to try and make as big a profit as possible.

All the problems caused by competition are being brought into DLO's in this way.

One good result of the campaign against DLO's has been the formation of joint committees from tenants associations and building trade unions to DLO's.

These are very in iportant because they repre ient the embryo of how the building industry should be run-by joint committees of the users and the building workers.

titorts should be made to widen the scope of these committees to cover the whole performance of the building industry, private and direct labour, relation to local authority contracts and to consider the expansion of public works to combat unemployment.

The WSL has always emphasised that the development of a public works programme trade union control is an essential part of a fight against unemployment.

Local Trades Councils should set up sub-committees to investigate what programme is required in an area, including reclamation of derelict land, new schools and nurseries, new hospitals and health centres, new youth clubs and recreation centres and new industries.

This would give a basis for the labour movement to fight for its proposals with government and local councils, and provide part of the programme for a planned economy.

Workers control of the sites is an essential part of the fight for nationalisation of the industry as a whole.

First it denies the employer the right to make profit out of poor working conditions, dangerous practices 'and non-unionised Secondly it lays the with opening the books of the building employers and supply firms to show to the workers that only nationalisation under workers' management can guarantee them a decent job.

The Labour Party has come forward with a series of proposals which constitute half-measures.

Whereas nationalisation would end casual labour by ensuring that all building workers had one permanent employer, Labour's proposals suggest a scheme similar to the Dock Labour Board.

Building workers would all be registered and would receive fall-back pay when unemployed.

No substitute Experience in the docks shows clearly that this is no substitute for permanent employment. It cannot guarantee a good standard of living, does nothing to eliminate the evils of bad quality, lack of training, and waste of resources which are a necessary part of the competitive tender system.

The Labour Party policy also proposes setting up a National Construction Corporation by nationalising a major construction firm.

This would then compete with other firms and set "a standard of excellence"

This policy (which fortunately is most unlikely ever to see the light of day) would create like Leyland a single "nationalised" corporation forced to compete with private capital on capitalist terms, and therefore forced to adopt all the same attacks on wages and conditions that the other building giants are involved in.

It would be no surprise to see such a corporation adopting the same anti-union stance as the other employers.

The case for nationalisation rests on the need for a construction industry which can be planned to serve the needs both of construction workers and the needs of workers for decent homes, schools, hospitals and workplaces.

It is a demand which develops naturally out of the problems which face construction workers both in the public and private sectors.

It is a demand which can only be realised by joint action by all workers to take control of the sites away from the building employers.

And it rests on the development of organs of control which can draw up the plans for how a nationalised industry should be run.

These organs of control will be the basis for the management of a nationalised industry.

They will already involve workers from other industries, and housewives.

And the full realisation of the potential of a planned construction industry will only come when these other workers have joined together to end capitalist rule.

But the struggle must start from here.

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SOCIALIST PRESS. 000sgr13-9

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PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL MOD CREA ALL