Hi everyone,
I am looking for one or two more papers to round out a panel of research papers
on construction work for the Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies,
June 1-2nd in Calgary.
http://cawls.ca/en/call-for-papers-cawls-2016-conference/.
If you have research you would like to present and are interested in being part
of the session, please send me a note at:
smills@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:smills@xxxxxxxxxxx>
CFP CAWLS 2016, June 1-2, University of Calgary
Fractures and Alliances Construction Work and Workers
Session organizer: Suzanne Mills, School of Labour Studies and Geography and
Earth Sciences, McMaster University
Construction is one of the most common occupations held by men and employs
approximately 7.1 percent of Canada's working population over age 15. Despite
its ubiquity, however, construction work and organizations representing
construction workers have received little attention from labour scholars. This
panel seeks to draw attention to construction work and argue that it is
important to labour studies scholarship for several reasons. First, the
fluctuating demand for construction workers means that construction projects
often hinge on mobile pools of labour, either inter-regionally or
internationally. This is especially the case for large industrial projects in
remote areas, and in large cities. Additionally, the quality of work within
construction is highly variable, ranging from very dangerous low paid work to
highly paid skilled trades work. As a result of both of these factors,
scholarship about construction work can provide insight into questions about
the spatial strategies used by worker organizations to provide employment
security and by employers to lower labour costs. Additionally, because
mobility, masculinity and racialization are structural elements of construction
labour markets, construction is a key site to examine inter-worker competition
and exclusion on the basis of citizenship, region, gender, racialization,
ethnicity or indigeneity, and questions of employer strategies with respect to
unions and lower labour costs. Given the impact of recent economic uncertainty
tied to oil and commodity prices on construction activity in Alberta and across
Canada, this session will also highlight the embeddedness of these questions in
broader economic context.
