Source: Givens, Richard A.Labor Law Journal; Issue 8,2008（8）：p468-477

Work security and high-quality low-rent housing in the construction industry

This article is concerned with the labor and the urban renewal aspects of the problems of job security in the building industry and high quality low-rent housing. The author is an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York.

HE SUPREME COURT DECISION that collective bargaining agreements in the building trades may permit employees to re-fuse to work on prefabricated materials focuses attention on the problem of job security in the building industry—and how it can be protected at the same time that high quality housing at low rents is provided for those not now able to obtain it.

Groups Involved in This Problem

Building trades employees are vitally concerned about the security of their jobs which may be threatened by building methods which use less labor. This concern comes on top of job insecurity due to the ups and downs of construction, the seasonal nature of some types of construction work, and the fact that there is usually no permanent employer, but merely jobs on particular pieces of construction work.

Citizens living in overcrowded or dilapidated housing who cannot afford to pay luxury apartment rents are vitally affected by the high level of building costs. This is particularly true of those whose access to the housing market is limited by racial discrimination.

All citizens in metropolitan areas are affected by blight caused in part by substandard housing, which i f not eliminated, tends to spread.

Taxpayers are necessarily affected by the amount of housing which can be obtained in return for public investment in housing programs.

The nation as a whole is affected both by the degree to which high and steady employment at good rates of pay can be assured in major industries of which construction is one of the most important,and by the degree to which the problems of our central cities can be effectively dealt with for the benefit of all and as an example pertinent to the struggle for men's minds throughout the world.

The vital character of each of these interests is clear. The importance of job security to employees hardly needs underlining. And one of the primary purposes of trade unionism has always been to promote job protection. This function is particularly crucial in the building industry because of seasonal and other changes in construction activity and the absence of any single long-term employer for the particular employee.Employees in widely differing industries have reacted to the threat posed by job insecurity in a variety of ways,including:

Formal and informal restrictios on the amount of work an employee may do in order that the employees do not "work themselves out of a job," a danger which can affect the livelihood of each member of the group;

Refusal to work on prefabricated materials which pose a threat to jobs or to utilize technological devices such as paint rollers which might eliminate the need for labor;

Use of influence to obtain legislation requiring standards of various kinds which maximize the amount of labor needed — of which the "ful crew laws" in the railroad field are an example ;

Inclusion of restrictions in union laws and constitutions dealing with who is to be allowed to do particular types of work and how it is to be done;

Limitations of various kinds on the possibility of outside employees competing for scarce jobs;

Efforts to compensate for periods of lack of availability of work, including seasonal slack periods, by ob taining high hourly wage rates for work performed.

Government Action Unsuccessful

Governmental action has been attempted from time to time to break up these practices, but it has not been accompanied by any substitute means of assuring job security to the em,ployees involved. Perhaps in part for this reason, it has proved unsuccessful.''On the other hand, in several industries in different situations, ways of

protecting employees threatened with job loss due to technological change have been worked out so as to permit an end to practices otherwise considered necessary to maintain the number of available jobs. The arbitration award in the 1963 railway dispute rendered under a federal statute providing for compulsory arbitration limited to the specific dispute® provided for elimination of some railway jobs but protection of jobs of existing employees. The additional positions when vacant were,in general, simply not to be filled.Such an approach could be considered because railroads are strongly stable institutions with identifiable employees who have built up seniority with particular carriers.

Present Methods Lacking

The vital and legitimate interest of building trades employees and their unions in job protection is of inescapable importance in considering how to promote high quality low-rent housing. But the consequences of our present methods of promoting

job security in the building industry have serious implications which are likely to endanger constructive progress in housing and perhaps in the end to endanger job security itself.By preventing the use of labor-saving technology, present methods raise

building costs. This tends to make it impossible to build decent housing at low or even moderate rents. Hence the rebuilding of dilapidated areas of our cities becomes most difficult unless the rebuilt housing is to be inaccessible to former residents of the area because of its high cost. The result is either that new housing for such areas is built at minimum rockbottom cost and is deemed undesirable, giving a bad name to housing

programs, or that former resident must be ousted from their homes and crowded into worse housing, new decent housing being unavailable due to its cost as well as to racial discrimination where the residents are members of minority groups.

The wider ramifications of the blockage of new decent housing at low rents are plain. Former residents of rebuilt areas, often confined within a ghetto by discriminatory realty markets, must take the best housing offered. As soon as an area

becomes integrated and open to minority occupancy, the pressure of desperate need for decent housing tends to bring about its resegregation as part of the ghetto—because of the shortage of new housing at rents within the residents' reach,

among other reasons. Fear of incorporation into the ghetto causes residents outside the ghetto to strengthen their resistance to integration. This confines the market available to residents in the ghetto and increases the pressure upon them to move into any opening in previously unavailable housing which may become available.

Thus the vicious circle continues and expands. Fear and bitterness by outside residents who do not want to be incorporated into ghettos communicates itself. An entire climate of despair, frustration and anger is developed in what become opposing

parts of a city. Crime, violence and riots born in part of frustration based upon attitudes on both sides and upon bitterness over conditions including housing intensify this unhealthy atmosphere.

Resistance to "urban renewal" which injures rather than helps residents of the areas to be renewed may well lead to loss of jobs in the construction industry. Job security may suffer in other ways also. Objection to the consequences of the measures

now used to protect jobs may result in assaults upon these methods which could be successful in eliminating them without anything else being put in their place. The fact that four Justices voted to hold agreements not to use prefabricated materials illegal under present law is an indication of this. (In Congressional-debates on present provisions. Senator John F. Kennedy had said thatexemptions from certain "hot cargo"

provisions for the construction industry did not exempt "boycotts of goods manufactured in an industrial plant for installation at the job site.)

The dilemma is therefore clear.For highly specific reasons as well as for reasons applicable to other industries as well, means to assure job security are vital in the building industry. At the same time, present methods of doing this have consequences which will become more and more difficult to tolerate.

Comparison with Other Fields

A comparison to what is done in other fields may be helpful. A wide range of measures ranging from supplemental unemployment benefits to retraining allowances  have been established in various industries, but these are merely palliatives. No union leader could accept such measures as a substitute for existing work restrictions and retain the support of the rank and file. In any event, we need more rather than less work in the building industry if the cost can be lowered to the residents of the housing to be built. This would mean more jobs and more job security, not less.

How can this potential be unlocked? One answer lies in the expectation that lower costs would widen the market, as they did for automobiles in the 1920s. But again this offers no assurance to a particular employee or group of employees

that they will be protected. Alone it cannot be a sufficient answer.

Executives are employed for an annual salary, often under a contract which guarantees them payment over a period of more than one year. If a building industry employee were offered a contract guaranteeing him payment of wages over a three-year period at an annual rate greater than the take-home pay he previously received during a similar period, he would gain financially and also obtain far greater job security than before. Such a transition to annual rather than hourly payment would

also benefit the public through lower building costs, since the public now pays higher hourly wages than in other industries partly to compensate the employee for periods when he will not be working. This might still not be enough, however, to assure continued job security for employees i f the total amount of construction to be done were not guaranteed to be such as to employ the full work force. A situation in wbich some workers had three-year contracts at lucrative salaries while others were out of jobs would hardly be attractive. Further, there would need to be assurance that tbe high level of employment would be maintained into the future.

Costs and Benefits of the Program

What, then, would be the costs and benefits of such a program? In considering the cost, we must not fall into the ancient error of assuming that there is a constant supply of money in existence and that if we use funds for housing we must cut somewhere else. On the contrary,our money supply and financial institutions are most elastic—it is resources which can be scarce and inelastic. If we expand the supply of

currency without expanding our resources, the effect can be inflationary.In the case of the building industry,we have a reserve of unused resources in the form of unused technological advances and partial use of manpower (members of one trade are not

allowed to fill in on the work of others during their own slack times on a job or during seasonal unemployment in their own trades, etc.).

If the need for these restrictions is eliminated by a program assuring job security and full use of resources,a great unleashing of capabilities is possible. It is also pertinent that the resources involved in a program of building of housing, schools and other such facilities are not in general the same as those involved in whatever military efforts the country may find it necessary to sustain.

To obtain the maximum benefits from such an effort, the widest community participation and efforts to bring together all of the interests at stake would be necessary. With a greatly expanded program of construction, for example, it should be

possible to employ central city residents previously not in the building industry without threatening the job opportunities or job security of any of its present employees. It should be possible to permit each area to participate in planning changes to take place within it. The legitimate needs of no group affected would have to be ignored.

Conclusion

Perhaps one of the groups which could benefit most from such a program would be residents of suburbs.The outward pressure of persons seeking to leave the central city would tend to be overcome over a sufficient period of time i f conditions in the cities were made attractive.The suburbs would thus be permitted to retain their suburban character,which would otherwise be lost. And it should not be forgotten that blight anywhere—like hatred, fear and despair—is not confined by boundary lines and will spread to us wherever we are unless its causes are overcome.An effort to overcome these causes must of course include concern with such problems as both fairness and effectiveness in law enforcement, better education, and expanding oppor-

tunity for all citizens in every field of life regardless of background. It must also include a concentrated attack on the twiri needs of decent housing for the cities at reasonable rents and job security in the building industry. These tasks are vital not for ourselves alone, but also for the future of the children of all of us and as an example to the entire world of the energy of a free society.