Memorandum submitted by Professor Linda
Clarke, Westminster Business School
1. PRODUCTIVITY
1.1 I am a specialist in the construction
sector and have conducted much comparative research comparing
skill levels, productivity and employment. I attach a paper, Divergent
Divisions of Construction Labour: Britain and Germany—(not
printed) about to be published—comparing the development
of construction labour in Britain and Germany. This shows the
high labour intensity of the construction labour process in Britain,
with at least double the numbers employed for the same output
compared to Germany. This labour intensity is in large part attributable
to low levels of training and low skills, the ratio of trainees
in the workforce being three or even four times greater in Germany
(at about 6% of total workforce) for a far superior—longer,
broader and deeper—training.
1.2 This picture has been confirmed through
our detailed studies of construction projects, comparing Britain,
Germany the Netherlands and Denmark. I attach a paper, Cost
vs production: labour deployment and productivity in social housing
construction in England, Scotland, Denmark and Germany (not
printed), written on these. This shows the far higher levels of
productivity achieved in each of the other countries, measured
in terms of square metres produced per day at, for example: 19.3
for England, 15.5 for Scotland, 13.9 for Germany and 12.9 for
Denmark. Similar findings are reported by Bernard Williams Associates
in their report to the European Commission Benchmarking of
use of Construction (Costs) Resources in the Member States (Pilot
Study): Final Report 24 March 2006.
2. PRODUCTIVITY
AND EMPLOYMENT
LEVELS AMONG
THE YOUNG
UNSKILLED
2.1 There is of course a particular problem
in this respect for construction. The main problem is that without
experience it is almost impossible to enter into the industry,
so that the young unskilled are disproportionately affected. In
most European countries, it is almost impossible now to work in
the construction industry without skills and the necessary training
to acquire these. Levels of unskilled have dropped dramatically
in most countries, though not in the UK (see again the paper on
Divergent Divisions of Construction Labour).
2.2 Of those training in construction (at
levels at any rate lower than other leading European countries),
62% are based in further education colleges, many of whom are
classified as unemployed. Very few have the possibility, once
trained, to enter the industry because they do not have the necessary
work experience or employer placement. This situation is outlined
in the paper Valuing labour (not printed). Those training
in FE, but unable to enter the industry, consist disproportionately
of youngsters of ethnic minority background, as shown in the attached
paper Gender ethnic minority exclusion from skilled occupations
in construction: a Western European comparison (not printed).
3. LACK OF
APPROPRIATE SKILLS?
3.1 Because construction is an increasingly
skilled industry, it is now very difficult to enter without appropriate
skills, which at a practical level can only be acquired through
work experience or simulated practice in workshops. It is these
latter that are particularly lacking and which the FE colleges
can only provide to a limited degree. FE colleges too tend to
concentrate on the traditional biblical trades (carpentry and
joinery, bricklaying, painting and decorating, plumbing), with
often poorly equipped training provision, and the trades themselves
clearly demarcated from each other and narrowly defined compared
to other European countries such as the Netherlands or Germany
(see our publication Craft versus industry: the division of
labour in European housing construction (not printed)). Other
areas outside these traditional areas, in particular groundworks,
machine operation, concreting and civil engineering do not receive
the systematic (two to three year training) they are given in
other countries, but depend instead on one-off short schemes (eg
for dumper drivers) which young people may not be able to afford
and which anyway provide little in the way of a career structure
in construction. Those who have undergone such short training
may earn little more than the minimum wage.
3.2 The lack of a clear career structure
is one important reason why young people will not be able to improve
earnings. This is a much more critical problem than in the past
when it was possible to progress from City and Guilds, to HND
to a profession CIOB qualification, a route increasingly tortuous
now as NVQs do not provide the necessary underpinning knowledge
to progress to HND level, as shown in the work of Hilary Steedman
at the NIESR.
3.3 For these reasons it is difficult for
young people to earn a "skilled rate" in the first place.
However, the low employment of young people in the construction
industry is not just attributable to inappropriate skills. It
is almost impossible now to work on a site if you are under 18
years of age and for young people generally because it is extremely
dangerous and there are stricter health and safety controls and
regulation. Without appropriate training, any employer would be
reluctant to employ a young person on these grounds alone.
4. EFFECTS OF
LABOUR MIGRATION
4.1 Young people have been restricted from
entering construction because of inappropriate skills and no means
to acquire them. As a result, employers have turned for recruitment
to workers from Eastern Europe. I have recently completed a study
of Heathrow Terminal 5 (T5) where this was abundantly clear. Many
hundreds of youngsters were training in construction in colleges
around the site (about 300 alone in one of the colleges I visited),
but this was almost entirely in traditional trades and I was informed
that few would have a chance to work in the industry because they
could not obtain the necessary work experience and because these
were not the areas of employment.
4.2 On T5 itself the ratio of apprentices
to workforce of one of the leading contractors was about one in
250, though at the time of the visit this was only one in 1,000!
This represents a rate of between 0.4% and 0.1%, which compares
with a ratio of apprentices to operatives in a country such as
Germany or Denmark of approximately 12%! In the meantime, the
site relied almost entirely for new recruits on labour from Eastern
Europe and countries such as Portugal and Germany, which it was
presumed had some experience in the industry. Workers (in particular
German) were regarded as having highly flexible, extensive (rather
than narrow) and transferable skills and were also prepared to
work the 60 hour week demanded, unlike many "local"
workers.
4.3 Such problems, and policies which might
address them, are described in the GLA report on Diversity
in Construction, launched at City Hall on 15 February 2007.
5. LIKELY FUTURE
PATTERN OF
EMPLOYMENT?
5.1 Construction is predicted to be an area
of very significant expansion over the next 10-20 years so should,
in theory, provide an area of great employment opportunity for
young people. For the construction industry, there are fairly
reliable forecasts from different UK regions, including the London
region, being produced by CITB through its Skills Networks and
Observatories.
6. WHAT IS
THE RATIONALE
OF GOVERNMENT
POLICY?
6.1 Unlike other European countries the
rationale of UK government policy is that training should be based
on employer demand and be employer led. The trade unions have
to a large extent been excluded from involvement in issues of
training and these are rarely part of the collective bargaining
process, except in areas such as electrical contracting. Yet employer
demand and employer interests are inevitably short term, whilst
those of employees and unions are more long term and concerned
with improving the skills and value of labour throughout the working
life. Government has not recognised these different interests.
Countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries,
France etc develop training policy and provision on the basis
of negotiation between social partners—the trade unions
and employers.
6.2 Government has also failed to recognise
a general decline in the apprenticeship system, a decline apparent
throughout Europe as individual employers increasingly retreat
from being directly responsible for training and apprentices.
In other countries measures have been put in place to overcome
this, whether the group training schemes found in the Netherlands
(and Australia), the well-equipped very modern training workshops
providing simulated work experience in Germany, or the increasingly
intensive college-based training of Denmark (with the first year
entirely in college, providing theoretical and practical training).
6.3 A further peculiarity of the British
system not identified in government policy is the clear divide
between the vocational education of a) operatives, accountable
to government and under, for instance, the FE colleges, and b)
professionals, accountable to the Privy Council through the professional
institutions (see my paper attached The Institutionalisation
of the Skill Division (not printed), published in Skills
that Matter, Palgrave). This divide has held back the development
of clear paths of progression from operative to professional and
of intermediate skills, which is the area of greatest growth in
most European countries. This is especially, but not only, evident
in the construction industry.
7. EXISTING TRAINING
PROGRAMMES
7.1 Existing training programmes for construction,
by focussing on un-reconstituted traditional skills, fail to provide
appropriate skills. This is not just a problem of focussing on
inappropriate skills but of a need to up-date and redefine existing
skills. A carpenter in, for instance, the Netherlands carries
out a far wider range of activities than the British carpenter,
just as the bricklayer does in Germany—so the German bricklayer
and the Dutch carpenter are in British terms "multi-skilled".
It is evident from interviews with employers that these "multi-skills",
capable of being transferred from one project to another, are
what is required for modern construction processes. In addition,
areas such as civil engineering have been grossly neglected in
training terms. Firms now seek people who can carry out most the
activities associated with groundworks, including driving a range
of machines, concreting work, laying out, even reading drawings.
But there is no training available for young people to carry out
all these activities, which require a mixture of applied practical
and theoretical skills and a great deal of investment in advanced
equipment. A country such as Germany overcomes this through the
government itself equipping training centres and workshops, with
the idea that these train for innovation whilst employers train
for the market.
7.2 For construction at least, the requirements
can be identified and to a large extent predicted. It is also
possible for government to take a lead and not just rely on demand.
For instance in Denmark a new training programme was developed
in the intermediate skills area for "construction architects"—now
one of the fastest growing occupations in construction. Similar
initiatives have been taken successfully in the Netherlands.
8. CURRENT APPRENTICESHIP
8.1 Apprenticeship in the traditional sense
is, in my view, a thing of the past. Indeed Germany stopped using
the term over thirty years ago when its training scheme was revamped.
Basing training on individual employer goodwill is far too vulnerable
a way to build the skills of tomorrow and equip youngsters with
a wide range of skills on which to build a career. For one thing,
the activities covered by one single employer can be extremely
narrow and even firm-specific.
8.2 There are many reasons why employers
have increasingly abdicated from responsibility for apprentices,
including: health and safety considerations; the decline in collective
bargaining concerning training; lack of trade union pressure with
the exclusion of trade unions from modern apprenticeships; lack
of obligation and regulation, as evident from the limited use
of statutory levies; the decline in long-term employment with
firms; self-employment and extensive use subcontracting; the easier
alternative of using migrant labour; and lack of links with further
education colleges. My experience, however, from the construction
industry is that where there are good quality training schemes—stretching
over 2/3 years, with well-equipped workshops, attractive trainee
rates, good theoretical underpinning, and providing practical
work experience—these are vastly oversubscribed and offer
those training good employment possibilities.
9. ORGANISATION
OF TRAINING
PROVISION
9.1 The first requirement is that all those
with an interest in vocational education—the employers,
the trade unions, providers/educators and government—be
built into the system. Currently the lack of a clear link between
employers and FE colleges is a serious impediment. For construction
at least, vocational education has to have three elements and
hence locations: a theoretical element, as provided by FE colleges;
a simulated element, through workshops, which can be jointly run;
and a practical element, which can be provided by one employer,
or better still a range of employers, and also by setting up special
training sites, with skilled tradesman to show young people what
to do.
9.2 A second requirement is that a "comprehensive
system" be established rather than the "anything goes"
range of different routes at the moment. A bricklayer with an
NVQ2 level can have received training from anything between one
week and two years! There is no clear standard or, as a result,
expectation.
9.3 A third requirement is to return to
the integration of practical and theoretical training and of work
experience and education. At the moment training for construction
has gone back to what it was in the 1950s, when it relied on day
release to college. The standard scheme of training established
in the 1970s, which relied on block release to college has largely
disappeared. Day-release is no way to organise training provision.
From the point of view of the college, it provides insufficient
time for the trainee to learn and develop; for the trainee it
is frustrating and often regarded as just a nuisance and of little
value; and for the employer trying to meet a deadline, it may
be regarded as dispensible. In other countries, block release
to college is the norm, even on a six-monthly basis, that is six
months in college, and then some months with an employer.
9.4 A fourth requirement is that training
provision be regarded as necessary for improving productivity
and for innovation, rather than meeting short-term employer needs.
10. GENERAL LABOUR
MARKET REFORMS
10.1 Most of these are incorporated in the
recommendations of the GLA report on "Diversity". They
include: wide use of Section 106 conditions with respect to training
and employing young people; the establishment of training levies;
establishing a system of training trainers/older skilled workers;
collective agreements on training/skills development, including
on recognised trainee and improver rates; linking pay more closely
to qualifications; implementing the Working Time Directive, as
currently young people are competing with labour brought in from
outside UK and willing to work 60-70 hours per week; statutory
annual training leave. Reforms need to be directed at equipping
young people with skills rather than accommodating the unskilled!
May 2007
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