CHAPTER 6

THE DE-SKILLING OF LABOUR BY THE SPECULATIVE BUILDER

The Paradox of the Unemployment of Skilled Building Workers.

The overwhelming demand from the working-class potential buyers was for a semi, and the builder was faced with very few options when considering how to form the dwelling. As has been shown, there was an adequate supply of materials and financing was readily available from building societies, so the major problem for the speculative builder was to recruit a sufficient labour force. The 1914-18 war had created a labour shortage, and in 1918 employment in the construction industry was only 50 per cent of the 1914 level (1). Skilled labour was very scarce and the attitudes of the trades unions were rooted in pre-war times. They refused to relax conditions so that demobbed soldiers up to the age of twenty-six could be trained. The numbers of apprentices was limited to one for every 4.4 journeymen. The training period was for five years and the wages were low during that period. Trades union members were keen to preserve their position as craftsmen. George Hicks, a Labour MP, indicates the attitude of the building trades unions when, in a speech in Parliament in 1932 during the debate on the Housing Additional Powers Act, he said that 'When as President of the Building Trade Operatives in 1920 I was offered £250,000 (by the government) to take 50,000 ex-servicemen into the building industry the whole idea was ridiculous'(2). This may have contributed to turning many workmen against the building trades unions, and resulted in the low percentage of workers who were unionised within the building industry as compared with other older established industries. There existed then and now an anti-union stance in most large construction companies. The unions were opposed to piece-work methods of payment, a system of working much favoured by the speculative builder. Piece-work in any form was barred, and written into union rules at the time were strict clauses making participation in piece-work a highly punishable offence; 'such was the determination of the unions to see that all available work lasted as long as possible' (3). The fight by the Trades Unions to continue the existence of craft trades unionism in the building industries help in maintaining a strong and continuing basis of organisation, but it did not increase the numbers of unionised men nor the role of the unions within the industry at a time of great expansion.

The speculative developers did find it difficult to employ good quality tradesmen, especially bricklayers, carpenters and plumbers. Although there was general widespread unemployment and the level in the building industry was calculated at around 10 per cent in 1924, rising to 30 per cent in 1930, there was still a shortage of skilled labour. Between the period 1924 to 1937 the Board of Trade figures show that there was an increase of 46 per cent in the demand for labour, while the unemployment rate in the building industry rose from the 10 per cent figure in 1924 through the peak of 30 per cent in 1930 to a level of 13 per cent in 1937 before the war effort distorted demand. But at a time of high national unemployment there was a shortage of skilled building craftsmen. Even though the number of unemployed rose from one and a quarter million in 1929 to two million eight hundred thousand in 1932 the job losses were concentrated in the export industries of iron, steel, shipbuilding and cotton manufacture where the percentages of those employed fell by 28 per cent between the period 1929 to 1932 compared with an overall fall of 5 per cent in other industries (4). 'Misery nevertheless spread its poison unevenly. While South Wales and the industrial North suffered, the home counties and the Midlands relatively prospered' (5).

Although the building industry was affected by the general economic depression, the supply of labour to the industry was stimulated by greater depressions in other industries such as coal-mining and ship-building. For example, there was nothing to prevent an unemployed shipwright signing on as a carpenter which would distort the statistics. When local authority house-building slackened at the end of the 1920s, skilled labour was released and taken up when the building of private houses for sale started in earnest in the years immediately after 1932. If subsidies had continued, the boom in private housing for the working classes might not have happened to the same extent because of the lack of skilled labour. It is impossible to determine the numbers of skilled men on the unemployment register in the early 1930s, as the returns from the Ministry of Labour are not accurate enough to determine what proportion of the figures relate to skilled and unskilled labour. An unemployed person in the 1920s and 1930s would have completed the form by filling in the last job he had held, even if it had only been a temporary one as a builder's labourer. He could also have described himself as a carpenter or any other skilled building worker in the hope of obtaining a job. In addition, a further problem in arriving at accurate figures is that only around '30.25% of building workers were being placed by the Ministry of Labour through the unemployment exchanges in 1936, as the employers prefer to pick and choose from among a crowd of work-seekers at the gates' (6).

Up until July 1925, the figures in the Ministry of Labour Gazette were divided into six categories showing the numbers of carpenters, bricklayers, masons, plasterers, painters and plumbers who were on the register; since that time the continued reclassification of occupations has made it difficult to get accurate figures. Bowen has written that as far as skilled and unskilled labour is concerned 'The ratio of craftsmen to all building workers has fluctuated in the United Kingdom between about 48 per cent and 53 per cent since 1924...Bricklayers, for instance were 10.8 per cent of the total in Scotland in 1938 and 30.2 per cent in the Midlands' (7) The ratio of craftsmen to all building workers remained relatively stable for most of the inter-war years although the relative importance of the unskilled labour component increased as the use of mechanisation became more common place, but it is difficult to interpret the available statistics. The lack of growth of skilled labour may be due to the relatively slow rate of technical change which craftsmen were prepared to accept, their limited use of mechanical equipment. The newly introduced mechanical equipment would have been used by the unskilled men, as the craftsmen would have stuck to their 'tools'. By the 1930s cement-mixers and mechanical diggers were generally available and used by the speculative builder, as were electric saws.

The large-scale use of unskilled labour by the speculative builders of the working-class houses and the lack of skilled labour available, for whatever reason, made it easy for so many houses of a modest standard to be built. If the labour market had offered an over-supply of unionised skilled craftsmen, it would have been difficult for the speculative builder to have constructed houses of the type he wished to build. The independent and often unionised craftsman would not have wished to have been associated with the building of small cheap houses devoid of any features where he could put his skills to use. The skilled craftsman would not have wanted to have built the houses so quickly, using so many bought-in materials and ready finished goods. The concentration of speculative building in the London area, and the relative lack of it in Scotland, is proved by the statistics which show that the proportion of craftsmen employed in the building industry in Scotland was '64.8 per cent compared to 46.1 per cent in London' (8). H. Robinson in The Economics of Building remarks upon 'the astonishing growth in the importance of unskilled worker (31.5% to 44%) .... probably connected to the introduction of new materials and new methods of production' (9). Board of Trade statistics show that if allowance is made for unemployment, there was a steady fall in the proportion of craftsmen actually employed in the 1920s (from 53.9 to 40 per cent, in the period 1921 to 1930) but in the 1930s the proportions rose again and reached 46 per cent in 1938, roughly the same as it had been in 1925. With the expansion of general contracting business and the surge of war work in the period after 1937, it is possible that there was an increase in the use of skilled labour in those areas. The majority of work in the smaller house can be carried out with the minimum of training, so long as there is a low level of expectation and a minimum number of skilled tradesmen able to correct mistakes and finish off where required. By 1936 the paradox was that 'there was a marked scarcity of building craftsmen in the summer of 1936. Despite this, the recorded percentages of skilled men unemployed was higher in June 1936 than in June 1929' (10).

Allen and Thompson's figures show that 90 per cent of those seeking work in the building industry were placed within one day, on a sample inquiry taken in June 1936 (11). This would confirm that the speculative builder was turning more to unskilled labour to build the houses on the new estates, many of them on a piece-work basis. Local authorities building with direct labour would have required workers trained to a higher standard than those required by the speculative builder and engaged clerks of works to supervise the jobs. However, relating to piece-work, 'Research in the housing sector has shown that the man-hours required by the more efficient firm may be as little as one-third of those of the least efficient' (12). It was also shown that 'The output of gangs immediately supervised by a working principal was higher than that of other gangs' (13). This resulted in a higher level of profit by the efficient, smaller piece-work proprietor who worked alongside his men. This was probably as a result of the higher level of skills available, and therefore a higher output of the gang and the better selection of the team members for their ability obtained from first-hand experience of the worker. The speculative builder could hope to build up a team of quick, well-skilled workers able to act on their own initiative with the minimum of supervision.

Eventually, even the unions recognised how attractive the system of piece-work was to some craftsmen since: 'those employed on outside work-preferred things this way. They were independent, could pack up their tools at short notice, and move to another job where conditions might be slightly better.(14)' There is very little documentary evidence relating to the attitudes of piece-workers in the industry during the 1930s but some decades later the Labour government in 1967 formed a committee to enquire into labour-only subcontracting under the chairmanship of Professor Phelps-Brown. The committee reported that from studies of attitudes of self-employed construction workers to their jobs it suggest that the 'desire to escape the impositions and obligations that are laid on employment but that self-employment avoids' was one reason who so many were self-employed. It was also noted that 'The small gang of self-employed men, used to working together, constitutes an informal partnership which can work very efficiently...The nature of their work often gives them great satisfaction' (15). The speculative builder in the 1930s took advantage of the way in which the gang leader was able to supervise and bring forward ideas which reduced the cost of the houses without any cost to the builder in employing managers to supervise men directly employed. There were no published surveys of building workers carried out in the 1930s to inquire of their attitudes toward their jobs, but in the Phelps Brown Report more than half of those who had entered the building industry gave type of work as their reason for taking the job (16).

The speculative builder not only had to compete with other industries for his labour but also with other sections of the building industry. The 1930s boom in private house building as opposed to the 1920s boom in subsidized house building coincided with the rise in civil engineering and the building of industrial works. The share of residential building activities as a percentage of the total activities in the construction index of the monthly Board of Trade returns was higher in 1926 than in any other time during the inter-war period (17). Where the total building industry is concerned, the figures in Bowley's Building in the British Economy indicate a very strong rise in non-residential building activities between 1932 and 1937 (18). Bowley shows that the residential building and the non-house-building activities were equally active between 1932 and 1934, but in the years after 1935 the non-residential activities increased. By the end of 1936 and into 1937 'a problem of even greater urgency arising out of the Defence Programme is connected with the rise in the cost of buildings...and the demand for building services occasioned by defence works' (19).

(1) A. Brown, Resources Available for War (Oxford Economic Papers, No.3, 1940), p. 6.
(2) Hansard 272, col. 646. Hicks had left school at eleven years old to become a bricklayer. He was active in the trades unions and became a Labour MP for Woolwich and subsequently Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Works.
(3) L. Wood, A Union to Build (London, 1979), p. 45.
(4) L.C.E.S. Key Statistics for the British Economy 1900-1962 (London, 1963), table F.
(5) R. Coad, Laing (London, 1979), p. 101.
(6) R. Allen and B. Thomas,. The London Building Industry and its Labour Recruitment through the Labour
Exchanges, Economic Journal, 47, (September 1937) p. 468.
(7) I. Bowen,The Building Industry in Wartime, Economic Journal, 49 (1939) p.666
(8) I. Bowen, The Building Industry in Wartime, Economic Journal, 49, 1939, pp. 666 & 669.
(9) H. Robinson, The Economics of Building (London, 1939), p.14.
(10) R. Allen and B. Thomas,. The London Building Industry and its Labour Recruitment through the Labour Exchanges, Economic Journal, 47, (September 1937) p. 466.
(11) idem, p 471, Table III.
(12) Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Certain matters concerning Labour in Building and Civil Engineering;1967-68. Cmnd 3714, (HMSO, 1968), The Phelps Brown Report. idem, Appendix 1. p. 170.
(13) W. Reiner and H. Broughton, National House Building Studies Special Report No.21 Productivity in House-building, (HMSO, 1953).
(14) L. Wood, A Union to Build (London, 1979), p. 47.
(15) Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Certain matters concerning Labour in Building and Civil Engineering;1967-68. Cmnd 3714, (HMSO, 1968),The Phelps Brown Report. pp. 141 and 150.
(16) ibid., p. 28.
(17) Board of Trade statistics.
(18) From Figure No.3, p. 327.
(19) The Builder (12 March 1937), p. 35.