Working time alterations within the Australian construction industry
| Date | 16 February 2011 |
| Pages | 70-86 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483481111095528 |
| Published date | 16 February 2011 |
| Author | Keith Townsend,Helen Lingard,Lisa Bradley,Kerry Brown |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Working time alterations within
the Australian construction
industry
Keith Townsend
Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Nathan, Australia
Helen Lingard
School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT,
Melbourne, Australia
Lisa Bradley
School of Management, QUT, Brisbane, Australia, and
Kerry Brown
Centre for Tourism, Leisure and Work, SCU, Bilinga, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a labour process theory interpretation of four case
studies within the Australian construction industry. In each case study a working time intervention (a
shift to a five-day working week from the industry standard six days) was implemented as an attempt
to improve the work-life balance of employees.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper was based on four case studies with mixed methods.
Each case study has a variety of data collection methods which include questionnaires, short and long
interviews, and focus groups.
Findings – It was found that the complex mix of wage- and salary-earning staff within the
construction industry, along with labour market pressures, means that changing to a five-day working
week is quite a radical notion within the industry. However, there are some organisations willing to
explore opportunities for change with mixed experiences.
Practical implications – The practical implications of this research include understanding the
complexity within the Australian construction industry, based around hours of work and pay systems.
Decision-makers within the construction industry must recognize a range of competing pressures that
mean that “preferred” managerial styles might not be appropriate.
Originality/value – This paper shows that construction firms must take an active approach to
reducing the culture of long working hours. This can only be achieved by addressing issues of project
timelines and budgets and assuring that take-home pay is not reliant on long hours of overtime.
Keywords Hours of work, Construction industry, Familyfriendly organizations, Australia
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In 1856 stonemasons and other building workers marched through the city of
Melbourne, Australia both to celebrate and to proclaim victory in the new “Eight Hours
System” that they had negotiated over the preceding months with leading employers
(Love, 2006). Marching under the banner of “Eight Hours Labour, Eight Hours
Recreation, Eight Hours Rest” the employees had successfully negotiated one of the
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PR
40,1
70
Received 10 April 2008
Revised 6 August 2008
Accepted 16 October 2009
Personnel Review
Vol. 40 No. 1, 2011
pp. 70-86
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/00483481111095528
earliest officially sanctioned 40-hour working weeks (Love, 2006). More than a century
later, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many commentators predicted a substantial
further reduction in working time and increase in leisure time (Brown and Rowe, 1998).
However, something went wrong. OECD figures suggest that full-time employed
Australians now work some of the longest hours among industrialized nations. Over
the last 20 years working time patterns have shifted from a pattern of declining hours
worked on average to one where working hours are increasing (Campbell, 2002). This
paper analyses the experiences in four construction industry case studies where
attempts to shift to five-day working weeks seemed to be quite “radical” by industry
standards.
It is argued by many that there are significant social problems associated wit h long
working hours (defined as 45 hours a week or more); for example, the potential
disruption to family life (Pocock, 2003; Townsend et al., 2003), sleep dysfunction
(Dawson et al., 2001), and workplace health and safety risks (Spurgeon et al., 1997).
Reductions or changes in working time practices have received research attention as
contributing to improving work-life balance, however the adjustment of working time
arrangements to deliver better work options for employees has been difficult to
achieve. Problems of job dissatisfaction, increased turnover, lack of general wellbeing,
substance abuse and psychological and psychiatric problems have been found to be
caused by imbalances of work and non-work life (Allen et al., 2000; Netemeyer et al.,
1996; Boyar et al., 2003).
Australia’s increasingly decentralized industrial relations (IR) system has
potentially exacerbated the problem of long working hours (Campbell and Brosnan,
1999). Not only do Australians work long hours, it is well established that not all
employees are paid for these extra hours (Campbell, 2002; Peetz et al., 2003). The
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reports that almost 30 percent of employees (2.9
million) work extra hours or overtime. Of these, 43 percent are usually paid for this
extra work while 48 percent usually worked unpaid overtime (ABS, 2007). The
discrepancy between these two cohorts is one of the most important issues to conside r
when managing working time arrangements for the construction industry. Each
construction site consists of a combination of employees who are paid for extra hours
(for example, tradespeople and labourers) and employees who are not paid for extra
hours (for example, engineers and managers). As will be discussed later, the distinctly
different groups are however, reliant upon the presence of each other to perform their
tasks.
To understand the decisions made within these case studies we draw upon a
neo-Marxist perspective of the labour process that suggests that capital needs to
organize production to its own advantage and consequently labour would be
disadvantaged (Braverman, 1974). Managerial control is a method to maximize
employee output and minimize capital expenditure (Hyman, 1975; Burawoy, 1979).
Management buys the worker’s potential to labour and must then try to control this
purchase to ensure surplus value and meet organisational ends – profits (Braverman,
1974). However, this mode of production leads to inevitable structural antagonism
because, simply stated, the interests of management and the interest of the employees
frequently collide. What is good for one is frequently costly for the other (Edwards,
1979, p. 12). In this paper, the area of antagonism resides around the notion of working
time and reward. A complexity arises when there are two distinct cohorts of employees
Working time
alterations
71
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