Capital, Labour and Economic Performance in the Engineering Construction Industry, 1960-1990

Topics:

  • Name Labour & labour market
  • Name Worker / employee & industrial relations inc conflict, negotiation, demarcation, perogative, etc
  • Name Crime & misdemeanour inc fraud, theft & sharp practice
  • Name Ethics

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Considers the performance of the engineering construction industry - builders of power stations, processing plant, etc - in terms of project overruns, etc, and notably the relative roles of organised labour and management in this to find that 'at root' the cause was 'due to the opportunistic practices of contractors who deliberately and covertly delayed construction in order to force the client into offering extra payments. A key profit focus of contractors lay in exploiting opportunities to generate additional payments. The widespread militancy of the 1960s and 1970s exacerbated overruns, but the key significance of militancy was that it was used as a tool by contractors in reproducing beneficial commercial relations with clients'. Main sources are archives and interviews. See the writer's 'Restrictive practices of capital. Employer commercial opportunism, labour militancy and economic performance in the engineering construction industry, 1960-80', Business History, 41, 1999