The Way We Build
A time traveler from the 1950s would find a contemporary construction site quite familiar. The visible changes may be subtle, but from a front-line worker’s perspective, the business has changed dramatically over the decades. What those changes have been and why they happened is the theme of Mark Erlich’s book, The Way We Build – Restoring Dignity to Construction Work. The U.S. author also talks about the often unsuccessful attempts to industrialize construction.
Erlich worked as a carpenter for the first part of his career and was elected to serve in various union leadership positions for over twenty-five years. His book looks at the past, present, and future of construction, especially from workers’ perspective.
The evolution of construction work
For a non-US reader, the story of how the construction work has evolved in the last 50 years is somewhat familiar. Construction work has been broken down into ever-smaller pieces. General contractors have replaced their tradespeople with multitier subcontracting and workers provided by labor brokers.
There has also been a shift from the traditional general contractor to a construction manager model. “The construction manager was now an extension of the owners’ vision and wallet,” Erlich writes.
Erlich dedicates much of the book to describing the history of construction trade unions and their relationships with contractors and clients in the USA.
Union density has declined radically over the years in the USA. In 1947, it was a remarkable 87.1%. In 2023, it was 16.3% (U.S. Department of Labor, Jan 23, 2024). In comparison, the same percentage is around 70% here in Finland.
The pursuit of efficiency
A universal dilemma for construction companies is low profitability. Still, customers complain about the high cost of construction. Some companies have tried to industrialize and systematize construction, others to improve the efficiency of existing processes.
Erlich mentions several examples of startups, established companies, and investors with high expectations of vertical integration and modular construction. Many of them did not make the grade. Erlich claims that while the bottom line on individual projects varies widely, the modular industry has not demonstrated that it can consistently build projects more cheaply. There are exceptions, and I'm sure we'll see more of them in the future.
The book offers an interesting tidbit: The earliest example of a fairly successful systematization was the Sears kit house from 1908 to 1942. Its blueprints and pre-cut building supplies were ordered from a specialty Sears catalog and shipped to the homeowner by rail.
A questionable tactic for cutting costs
Some contractors have resorted to improving their productivity through cost-cutting at the fringe of legality.
Erlich cites a national 2017 study on “misclassification.” According to it, between 12.4% and 20.5% of the construction industry workforce (1.3 to 2.2 million workers) were improperly classified as independent contractors or employed informally off the books. The study concluded that fraudulent employers may have realized between $6.2 and $17.3 billion in labor cost savings this way, depending on worker income assumptions.
Looking into the future
At the end of the book, Erlich shares ideas on how to brighten the future of the U.S. construction worker. He argues that responsible employer principles can be used in every area, regardless of the presence or absence of unions.
"Construction workers should be rewarded fairly for their willingness to perform dangerous tasks, and the universal pathway to the middle class should be reinvigorated," Erlich sums up.
Coming up: An interview with Mark Erlich
I will be interviewing Mark for my podcast. The working title is “The Future of the Construction Worker.” I’m very much looking forward to the interview, and I’ll let you know as soon as it is published.
The Way We Build is available at the University of Illinois Press and Amazon.com.
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