"The need for a skilled, motivated and effective workforce is fundamental to the creation of the built environment across the world. Known in so many places for a tendency to informal and casual working practices, for the sometimes abusive use of migrant labor, for gendered male employment and...

The decline of the U.S. labor movement is an often told tale. The stabilization and slow improvement of the position of the building trades, the labor movement in the construction sector, is less well known. Membership fell from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, from 1.6 million in 1977 to...