Employment-related geographical mobilities in the construction sector: introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT

This introduction serves several purposes. First, it provides some context around the phenomenon of Employment-Related Geographical Mobility. Second, it introduces the papers included in this Special Issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Construction sector employment
• employment-related Geographical Mobility
• work and Mobility
• construction Worker Mobility

Construction is one of the largest and most diverse industries globally, encompassing the building, demolition, renovation and maintenance of built environments across a number of sub-sectors, including civil (transportation and infrastructure), industrial (major projects, such as dams and mines), and residential and commercial (such as hospitals and hotels) construction (Buckley et al. 2016; Mills 2017).

A growing body of research investigates different facets of the construction industry relevant to the social and economic relations of work. This research has focused on labour shortages (Barnetson and Foster 2014), recruitment and training (Fellini et al. 2007; Power 2017), workplace management and organisation (Dainty and Loosemore 2013), gender and workplace cultures (Ness 2012; Thiel 2013), work-life balance (Francis, Lingard & Gibson 2006) and (non)-unionisation (Berntsen 2016), among other subject areas. Of interest in this special issue on construction in Canada and Australia is the way in which an intrinsic feature of the construction industry – the site-based but transient nature of the work, requiring extensive and varied forms of employment-related geographical mobility (E-RGM) to and within work (Haan et al. 2014) – intersects with these and other topics.

Due partly to the economic importance of the construction industry and frequent, large public investments in state-commissioned projects, the relationship between diverse patterns of E-RGM and social and labour market issues in construction is a matter of significant policy interest. However, there is an apparent shortage of research focused on this relationship. With some exceptions, such as reliance on fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) as a workforce management strategy for large industrial projects, its varied impacts (Storey 2010), and the vulnerabilities of international construction labour migrants (Buckley et al. 2016), the contexts, patterns, processes and consequences of mobility in the industry are not well understood. More work needs to be done on the relationship between mobility and other issues, such as labour shortages, construction worker identity, reliance on migrant workers, ongoing challenges recruiting and retaining women into frontline trades positions, and health and safety, including mental health issues among construction workers. These gaps are partly a result of the limited social science research on construction but can also be linked to a larger disjuncture between the literatures on work and mobility that is only now being addressed (Barber 2018; Cresswell et al. 2016).

This special issue identifies and helps strengthen our understanding of E-RGM and construction, including its dynamics and significance, by bringing together six contributions from recent research conducted in Canada and Australia. Although these countries could hardly be farther apart geographically, their colonial settlement histories, industrial composition, population dispersion, rates of urbanisation, and reliance on primary and extractive industries are similar. This special issue grows out of a major, Canada-focused multi-sector and multi-disciplinary program of research called the On the Move Partnership (www.onthemovepartnership.ca), with which the four editors are all affiliated, but draws on relevant Australian research from other projects as well. Over the past eight years, On the Move (OTM) researchers have been examining complex/extended geographical mobility to and within work in the Canadian contexts and its impacts on employers, workers and their families, and source, host and hub communities. This concept of complex/extended mobility encompasses the spectrum of mobility from long daily commutes (> 1 hour each way) through to interjurisdictional mobility and related extended absences, including international mobility of labour migrants. It also encompasses mobility within work, as in situations where workers commute to transient and sometimes multiple worksites, or are employed in mobile workplaces such as in trucking and seafaring (Neis and Lippel 2019). This body of research includes qualitative and mixed methods studies to address the intersections of work, mobility, and family and community using insights from economic geography, feminist political economy, and labour studies (Haan et al. 2014; Cresswell et al. 2016; Neis et al. 2018; Barber 2018; Roseman, Barber & Neis 2015), undergirded by a concern with the politics of mobility (Cresswell 2010; Neis and Lippel 2019). Overall, diverse complex/extended mobilities are a fundamental characteristic of the construction sector and have thus been a core focus of some OTM social science researchers, as we will expand on further in what follows.

Construction worker mobilities vary with the nature and context of both the job and the site. In the construction phase, resource extraction projects often employ large, diverse, and shifting groups of trades and other workers for periods of weeks, months, and, in some cases, several years. In the operations phase, labour forces tend to be smaller and more stable. Depending on the location, some may live in the region and commute daily, while others engage in long-distance mobility (fly-in/fly-out, drive-in/drive-out, and multi-modal transport arrangements) on a rotational basis (Haslam-McKenzie 2010; Storey 2010). The latter may occur as a result of travelling from communities and regions with limited local employment options (Lionais et al. 2020; MacDonald et al. 2012; Ryser et al. 2016). Furthermore, many large, remote construction sites offer camps to accommodate at least some of the mobile workers, while at others, workers are either placed in regional hotels or other such accommodations that are paid for by the employer/contractor, or, in the worst case scenario, are forced to find and pay for accommodations on their own. Road, pipeline, and rail construction workers, as well as construction maintenance workers such as welding inspectors, move from camp to camp as the construction moves or short-term maintenance contracts start and end. Heavy equipment operators and truck-drivers working in the construction sector are often doubly mobile in that they may commute long distances to work in mobile workplaces.

On the global scale, increasing numbers of construction workers are international migrants, of both documented and irregular status (Buckley et al. 2016). With the exception of elite, speciality workers/firms, international labour migrants tend to be away from home for prolonged periods of time, sometimes spanning years, with limited options for returning or family unification within the host country. In some situations, these workers will find themselves concentrated in specific segments of construction-related jobs, including, for example, working as camp staff in Alberta’s oil sands.

Employment rates, locations, and work-related mobility arrangements are subject to change, influenced in part, by the boom-and-bust cycles of commodity prices as well as public and private investments in various types of infrastructure projects. In some cases, construction employment-related mobility is arranged by and paid for, in part or entirely, by the employer/contractor; in others, costs are designated as the responsibility of a subcontractor or the employee themselves. These are arrangements that fluctuate and may change over time or vary between jobs and groups of workers on the same project. For unionised workers, compensation for travel may be built into collective agreements, however, in the non-unionised world, which is the situation for many construction sites, this is not always the case (Martin, this issue). As well, while companies or sub-contractors sometimes pay the travel, accommodation, and meal costs of workers during periods when it is important to ensure adequate labour supplies to fulfil production requirements, these supports may be cut or constrained during other periods or for particular groups – for instance, labourers and apprentices as opposed to Red Seal trades workers.

The pervasive and often complex mobilities typical of a significant proportion of the construction sector make workers and their families vulnerable to disruptions in work, travel, and family lives, as well as to infection, as in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic (Neis et al. 2020). Workers who experience travel-related infections, injuries and fatalities may or may not be eligible for workers’ compensation (Lippel and Walters 2019). Technological changes in areas including automation (such as driverless vehicles) and pre-fabrication, are beginning to transform work roles. It is suspected that the rate of change is likely to increase (Veen et al. 2017) and these changes will impact future mobilities.

Each of the articles in this special issue of Labour & Industry situates the research within the larger literature on work and mobility, with a focus on construction. Collectively, they outline why the relationships between work, mobility, families, and communities in the construction sector are worth studying. Overall, the articles discuss what makes the industry unique, as well as areas where construction appears to overlap with other industries. In what follows, we give an overview of each article and what it entails for the topic at hand.

Concerns about labour shortages are common in the construction industry and are related to efforts to diversify construction workforces. This is done by undertaking efforts such as training and employing more women, as well as increasing the employment of temporary foreign workers. The Canadian Construction Association, for example, estimates a labour shortfall of more than 300,000 workers in the Canadian construction industry by 2029 (Buildforce Canada 2020). In the first paper, ‘By the Numbers: The Construction Industry in Canada from 1986 to 2016,’ Michael Haan, Georgina Chuatico, and Christopher Hewitt provide a demographic overview of the construction industry in Canada, focusing in particular on the composition of the labour force between 1986–2016 and changing patterns of mobility. Despite extensive rhetoric about how the industry is changing, they find little evidence to support this and, rather, come to the common conclusion that construction workers in Canada are still likely to be male, married, and with lower levels of education. The fact that most workers are married is significant, because it points to the fact that there are often household members working behind the scenes to support construction work, including its mobility-related challenges (Neis et al. 2018). The authors also document the fairly significant shift in the geographical origins and mobility patterns of workers, and speculate that this may be constraining women’s engagement in the industry.

The second paper is entitled ‘Dis-orienting mobile construction workforces: impacts and externalities within the political economy of resource-based regions.’ Authored by three geographers, Laura Ryser, Greg Halseth, and Sean Markey, it draws on a case study of work and mobility in rural western Canada at BC Hydro’s massive Site C dam project in northern British Columbia. Drawing on their case study and new institutionalism, they situate the latter in this changing political economy and mobile landscape in order to expand understanding of how stakeholder behaviours are affecting labour practices. The authors note that the transformation of the political economy of labour landscapes in resource-dependent regions has important implications for workers, families, communities, service providers, businesses, and industries. Within this larger context, the authors focus on evolving mobile workforce practices and their associated implications for workers in the construction sector. In particular, they look at how the changing demand for mobile labour in Canada has shifted the negotiating power of both industry and workers, arguing that, over time, mobile work has created a new form of worker-employer dependence where some elements of traditional local labour relationships still exist, but other elements have shifted. Thus, underdeveloped industry policies and weak senior government regulatory regimes do not reflect the realities of these changing mobile work landscapes. The failure to renew workplace policies and processes to reflect mobile labour practices has resulted in a dis-orienting environment for mobile workforces where many of the impacts or externalities associated with mobile work have been transferred to workers, their families, and their communities.

The third paper, by Australian geographer Fiona M. Haslem McKenzie, entitled ‘Branded with the same mobility brush – The construction workforce in the Western Australian resources industries,’ uses the New Mobilities Paradigm to investigate the specificities of resource-based construction workforces. In Australia, construction and operations workforces are subject to discourses which alternately differentiate them or portray their experiences as similar. The paper thus compares perceptions of construction workers with their lived experiences. From this effort, we learn how mobile work intersects in different contexts and across time to influence work, travel, and home lives. Findings indicate that shift scheduling and rotations vary across groups and types of work, and can change over time and across work sites. Haslem McKenzie also documents the wide diversity in the provision and quality of accommodation, which, together, can influence the ability and willingness of some groups, such as women in households with dependent children, to stay in construction-related work. The paper identifies related policy issues and concerns that arise from these findings, and highlights the necessary trade-offs and challenges for those with careers in construction. These challenges often extend to families and social networks.

The next paper is based on research in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, work with the concept of worker agency, proposing in different ways that mobility in construction work represents a kind of constrained agency that must be understood contextually. The paper, entitled ‘“Wherever I can work, I got to go”: Negotiating mobilities in the context of volatility in the Canadian construction industry’ is written by geographer Lachlan Barber and anthropologist Samantha Breslin. The article seeks to contribute to understandings of the normalisation of itinerancy and related shifting patterns of complex/extended work mobility on the part of construction workers given the volatility of the industry. Specifically, it addresses the linked questions of how changing employment and related changes in mobility patterns become accepted as a normal feature of construction work (Loosemore et al. 2003) and with what effects. Drawing on a qualitative study of differently mobile construction workers based in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) on Canada’s east coast, the article explores the theme of worker agency, including the extent to which decisions regarding work-related travel and relocation fall within the domain within which workers act as agents. Atlantic Canada, particularly NL, has historically been a labour exporting region, particularly for male workers, but mobility patterns and conditions, numbers of travelling workers, sector, and destination locations are volatile and tied to larger-scale commodity markets and investments in host regions, such as those in Central and Western Canada, as well as in source regions. Exploring how workers respond to these conditions of itinerancy and related changing mobilities can contribute to understandings of how mobility figures in gendered construction workplace cultures and among relatively privileged workers – as agents embedded in specific contexts – experience, engage with, and respond to an often overlooked form of precarity.

The fifth paper is by John Martin (Research and Policy Officer, Queensland Council of Unions) on the use of rosters to manage mobility among Australian electrical construction workers employed during the construction phase for the massive INPEX Ichthys LNG project near Darwin. In a country as large as Australia, and with many natural resources located far away from population centres, fly-in fly-out (FIFO) arrangements have become central to construction activity in the natural resource sector. Martin uses in-depth qualitative interviews with workers and others, and a review of reports and policy documents, to argue FIFO work arrangements create space for employers to exploit some workers, including through longer hours, substandard working conditions, and attempts at de-unionisation. The interviews show that, contrary to public opinion, FIFO was not a lifestyle choice for these workers. They highlight barriers to their giving up this work and how working for four weeks straight with only six days off between rotations exacts a heavy personal toll. Martin shows that individuals in these arrangements associate FIFO with marital breakdown, depression, and with an increased risk of suicide. He notes that workers on the site complained about and protested the roster but changes were introduced only towards the end of the project and after the union was legally able to take protected industrial action as part of claims for a new collective agreement. The paper concludes that it is doubtful that these workers’ rosters complied with the obligations placed on the company by health and safety legislation.

The special issue also includes an interview with Jorgen Gullestrop from Australia’s Mates in Construction. The interview carries forward the theme of worker mental health and suicide in the construction sector from the Martin contribution by focusing on the history and core approach of the Mates in Construction program in their work to bring down high suicide rates in the sector. In his interview with On the Move Partnership Project Director, Barbara Neis, Jorgen Gullestrop, CEO of MATES in Construction in Queensland and Northern Territory in Australia, describes what health and safety in construction was like when he arrived in the country from Denmark as a young plumber, his involvement with the construction union movement, including recruiting women into the sector, and the composition of the Australian labour force and sources of precarity in the sector. He discusses the philosophy behind and organisation of MATES in Construction, which operates as an independent charity. MATES has spread across multiple and diverse types of construction sites in Australia, including many that are non-union, as well as into mining in Australia and construction in New Zealand. This growth points not only to the success of the initiative, but also to the persistent problem of inordinately high rates of suicide in the construction, mining, and energy industries.

Finally, the special issue includes a research note or insights piece and a book review. Emma Quinn et al.’s insights piece tracks the sex/gender division of labour in Canada between 1991 and 2016 using the Canadian Census of Population. The authors track changes and continuities in the distribution of women and men across occupations, explore some of the reasons for the persistence of gendered divisions of labour (including in construction), and identify key avenues of inquiry for future research. The special issue concludes with a review by Anthony Forsyth of Against Labour: How U.S. Employers Organised to Defeat Union Activism edited by R. Feuer and C. Pearson.

A number of themes emerge across the collection. First, we do not have a good sense of the number of people engaged in E-RGM in construction or of the associated distribution, patterns and consequences of their mobilities. These gaps are partly a result of how labour data are collected nationally and regionally. Most data record the de jure location of individuals, or the location where a person lives for most of the year. Very few datasets capture the work-related mobility flows of individuals, making qualitative work so important for understanding this crucial aspect of construction. Second, while it is clear that (some) workers and families benefit from long distance commuting arrangements in the construction industry (e.g., higher incomes and employment opportunities for those in regions with high unemployment), many of the externalities of mobility (Ryser et al., this issue) are downloaded onto workers, families, and communities, especially in the context of increased precarity in the industry. In this context, workers and families are faced with constrained agency and have to varying degrees, figure out, deal with, adapt to, and bear many of the personal and financial costs of work-related mobility.

The papers in this issue document the financial, social, and psychological impacts of long commutes and living in accommodations that are often poor quality or unwelcoming; the health and safety consequences of fatigue due to long working hours and extended rotations; and the effects of prolonged absences from friends and family. Together, the papers encourage us to think about how the organisation of work that relies on a mobile workforce may exacerbate existing inequalities and contribute to a system that is not working for workers, families, and communities. They also demonstrate that the similarities found between Australia and Canada likely extend to other countries, suggesting that many of the findings in this issue would have implications globally. How can the construction industry be reorganised to better support workers, families, and communities? This question seems especially pertinent in the current context of the pandemic.

Much has changed since this special issue began to take shape two years ago. In particular, the research and writing pre-date the COVID-19 pandemic, which, beginning in January 2020, has drastically transformed daily life in profound and uneven ways around the world. As lockdowns and restrictions on mobility were announced in the spring with more happening again in fall 2020, many people have continued to travel to and between workplaces, providing essential services and putting themselves at risk of infection. Construction workers have often been among those deemed essential.

The challenges posed by the pandemic for the mobile labour force, including construction workers, are explored in more depth in On the Move’s Mobility in a Pandemic: COVID-19 and the Mobile Labour Force Working Paper last updated in August 2020 and the associated series of blogs (Neis et al. 2020) but it is instructive to bring some of the insights developed there to our conclusion. In Australia, Canada, and the United States, the continuation of construction projects when most other workplaces shut down in March and April sparked debate and led to differing policies. In the Canadian context, Quebec, for instance, implemented broader temporary restrictions on construction activity than Ontario (Clinkard 2020). Commentators remarked that certain kinds of construction, such as health care facilities, infrastructure, and affordable housing may more understandably be defined as essential than others, like high-end housing (Haag 2020). Responses to the pandemic at work sites varied greatly, including the temporary curtailment of new construction at sites like British Columbia’s Site C dam, the introduction of stringent social distancing rules and sanitation facilities on others, and minimal changes elsewhere. These differences map onto diverse geographical contexts, types of construction, and employment relations settings, revealing stratification in this and other industries.

As discussed in Neis et al. (2020), in Canada and Australia, interjurisdictional FIFO and drive-in/drive-out (DIDO) workers on rotations have been especially impacted. Not surprisingly in light of the history of pandemics and deaths in Indigenous communities, as well as limited access to health care services, many Indigenous communities were rapidly locked down by their leaders to prevent the spread of infection. This effectively prevented mobile Indigenous construction and other workers from going to work if they wanted to return to their communities. Interjurisdictional and some intrajurisdictionally mobile construction workers in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere also confronted major challenges, including self-isolation requirements in the event of an outbreak on site and on their return to their home jurisdiction, making shorter rotations unfeasible, creating uncertainty and concerns around when they would return home, about family and community infections and about how much time they would get to spend with family and friends before travelling back to work. The result was sometimes a resort to more extended periods at work with fewer trips home, thereby exacerbating challenges for workers and their families related to separation, fatigue and disruptions.

Vulnerabilities to outbreaks in camps and dormitories are illustrated by the high rate of infection in dormitories in Singapore housing migrant workers employed mainly in construction. The substandard conditions in these crowded spaces, socially and spatially removed from the city, reflect a form of ‘institutionalised neglect’ (Yea 2020) that was exposed by the crisis. International migrant construction and other workers elsewhere were also at risk of deportation in the context of COVID but might not be able to access transportation home or gain entry to their home countries.

All of this speaks to the complexity of jurisdictional and employer relations that mobile construction and other workers must navigate – and are expected to navigate by companies – and to the idea that governments have been slow to identify and address these issues in their pandemic policies. The pandemic is a stark reminder of the importance of documenting and attending to extended/complex mobility for work, its dynamics and distribution across sectors and groups, and its consequences for employers, workers and their families, and for communities in policies and practice (Neis et al. 2020). It also reminds us to think about unequal experiences and impacts of mobility, and how quickly and startlingly taken-for-granted norms in the realm of work may be disrupted.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Haan

Dr. Michael Haan is an Associate Professor at Western University. He is also research associate at the Prentice Institute for Global Population and Labour at the University of Lethbridge, and at the McGill Centre for Population Dynamics.His research interests intersect the areas of demography, immigrant settlement, labour market integration, and data development. Dr. Haan is widely consulted by provincial and federal governments for policy advice in the areas of immigration, settlement services, the Canadian labour market, and population aging. Dr. Haan is currently investigator or co-investigator on over ten million dollars of research focused on immigrant settlement, developing welcoming communities, and identifying the factors that predict successful retention of newcomers. He is also a co-investigator for On The Move Partnership.

Barbara Neis

Dr. Barbara Neis (Ph.D., C.M., F.R.S.C.) is John Lewis Paton Distinguished University Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Honorary Research Professor in the Department of Sociology. Professor Neis has worked for more than two decades in multi-disciplinary teams carrying out research in marine and coastal contexts including on social and environmental change, occupational health and safety and mobile work. She is the Project Director for the On the Move Partnership.

Lachlan Barber

Dr. Lachlan Barber is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Hong Kong Baptist University. Before moving to Hong Kong he held a post-doctoral fellowship in the construction component of the On the Move Partnership. An urban and cultural geographer by training, Lachlan’s research interests include geographies of policy change, mobility studies (including work-related mobilities and urban transport), and cultural heritage. His PhD research explored shifting terrain of heritage politics in post-handover Hong Kong through a policy mobilities lens. Lachlan has led several research projects on employment-related geographical mobility in Newfoundland and Labrador’s construction industry. Key themes in this research include the impact of economic volatility and labour market contraction on worker mobilities, and the intersection of mobility with the gender dimensions of construction work and workplaces.

Nicole Power

Dr. Nicole Power is a feminist sociologist. Much of her research has focused on the gender impacts of fisheries restructuring on work and workers in fisheries communities, and young people’s experiences and understandings of work, life and outmigration in fisheries communities. Her research has also focused on health and safety in diverse work contexts including fisheries, corrections, skilled trades, high-risk work, and most recently, academia. She is also a co-investigator for On The Move Partnership.