The construction trades once provided unionized craftsmen a route to the middle class and a sense of pride and dignity often denied other blue-collar workers. Today, union members still earn wages and benefits that compare favorably to those of college graduates. But as union strength has declined over the last fifty years, a growing non-union sector offers lower compensation and more hazardous conditions, undermining the earlier tradition of upward mobility. Revitalization of the industry depends on unions shedding past racial and gender discriminatory practices, embracing organizing, diversity, and the new immigrant workforce, and preparing for technological changes.

Mark Erlich blends long-view history with his personal experience inside the building trades to explain one of our economy’s least understood sectors. Erlich’s multifaceted account includes the dynamics of the industry, the backdrop of union policies, and powerful stories of everyday life inside the trades. He offers a much-needed overview of construction’s past and present while exploring roads to the future.

Mark Erlich is the Wertheim Fellow at the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program and the retired Executive Secretary Treasurer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters. His books include Labor at the Ballot Box.

Acknowledgments
1. A Tale of Two Cities
2. Snapshot of an Industry
3. The Heavy Hand of the Business Roundtable
4. Misclassification as a Business Model
5. Immigration, Payroll Fraud, and the Underground Economy
6. Technology and the Future of Construction Work
7. Building Under a Roof
8. Many Rivers to Cross: Organizing and Diversity
9. Regulators and the Challenge of Enforcement
10. Restoring a Pathway to the Middle Class
11. Building a High Road Future

Notes

Index