Dhal, M (2020) Labor stand: Face of precarious migrant construction workers in India. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 146(6): 04020048, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
The construction sector of India is the best representation of the informal workforce, which employs 36.12 million workers. These laborers flock together in a particular place on early morning every day in order to find a wage provider for them. It is a sale of labor for the day, where workers stand and make themselves available for a day to be hired by contractors or individual house owners. These places are known as labor stands, a stop for finding daily laborers for construction work, which is the distinctive addition of this research to the scant literature. This paper tries to explore the labor process among these unique informal construction workers' labor assemblies consisting of 15,000 laborers per day and explore their employment conditions and labor relations. The paper also aims to examine the role of various actors of industrial relations such as trade unions and the government in regulating this employment relationship. The paper is based on a field study encompassing the transcribed records of observation, field interaction with 84 migrant construction workers, and 118 still photographs. The data were analyzed by using qualitative analysis software and adopting open thematic coding and later by developing categories and hierarchy and doing comparative analysis. The findings reveal that these laborers experience precariousness and are challenged by nonavailability of regular work, shortages of food, burden of large family size, and social evils of living in a slum, and also face being harassed by goons as well as contractors with minimal support from trade unions and government. Employers are apathetic toward their legal obligations. With labor stands being a primary source of labor supply to the construction sector, the findings of this paper will help in enriching labor relations and policy measures for its regulation.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction; government; labor stand; migrant labor; precarious work; trade union |
| Index terms: | qualitative analysis, regulation, construction sector, shortages, field study, face, comparative analysis, construction work, trade union, policy measure, India, migrant labour, construction worker, interaction, labour relation, slum, informal construction, industrial relation, employment, labour supply, owner |
| Subjects: | practitioner, policy studies, research design and methodology, economic analysis, construction operations, data analysis and analytics, operations management, psychology, labour economics, urban design, Geography, research methods, economics, management, behavioral psychology, political science, industry analysis, sociology, demography |
| Topics: | Geographical Context, Project Management, Research Practice, Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions, Governance, Urban Studies, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, Organizational Design |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here