SOME EMPIRICAL FINDINGS

These different assumptions have also been confirmed by case studies which Le Groupe Bagnolet has carried out for investigating international joint ventures in the construction industry. For the project of the Second Severn Crossing in Great Britain, which is described in Working Paper 12, the two joint-venture partners - a French and a British company - shared in providing the technical and commercial staff for the individual structural components, whereas the construction workforce was supplied or recruited by the British company. For the construction of the channel tunnel, described in Working Paper 11, there was likewise a British-French joint venture responsible, but strictly speaking the construction itself cannot really be regarded as a foreign assignment because on each side of the Channel the relevant native workforce was employed, except at the senior management level where French managers and professionals were posted to the contractor's head office in Great Britain. Neither, of course, does this example, refute the basic hypothesis on the foreign assignment in joint ventures of construction industry. For the various parts of the Storabælt, described in Working Paper 14, which were each constructed by differently composed international joint ventures, these international joint-venture partners likewise post ed their technical and commercial staff, whereas the construction work itself was mainly carried out by Danish construction workers who were either supplied by the Danish joint - venture partner or specially recruited for these tasks. And even the exceptions confirm the basic assumptions. For a small part these concern the Storebælt project, which is described in Working Paper 14. Here for the cross-passages between the main tunnels a mechanised solution wasoriginally planned, for the execution of which Danish construction workers would have been employed and, like the others, recruited on the local labour market. But before - due to the progress of the total project - this technical solution was implemented, a temporary failure of a tunnel boring machine in the main tunnel happened. To avoid additional risk, it then was decided to give up the idea of a mechanised solution for the cross-passages and to execute the works with a special labour force and to dig the cross-passages by hand. For these works Irish tunnel workers were employed. These specialists could not have been found on the local labour market, and the costs arising from their posting could be offset against the costs of a project delay, in this way diminishing the latter. The other exception, however, is much more extensive and concerns almost the whole project at Friedrichstadtpassagen in Berlin which is described in Working Paper 15. On the one hand it is true that here as well the experts and the managing staff were posted by the construction companies responsible for the execution of the project, whereas the workforce was recruited on the local labour market. With few exceptions, however, this workforce was not really local by origin. Rather it stemmed almost exclusively from other countries. Thus at first glance it might seem as if at international joint ventures for the realisation of construction projects the workforce, too, might under certain circumstances be employed according to the posting principle. However, nothing would be farther from the truth. In reality this was due to a completely different fact - the migration of workers in search of better living conditions than could be offered by their own countries for a foreseeable future.