LABOUR MIGRATION AND THE LABOUR MARKET IN CONSTRUCTION

The fact that the workforce employed on these construction sites did not come from Berlin but mainly from different countries of East, South, and South-East Europe largely mirrors the situation at present dominating the German labour market for construction crafts. In some way, however, it also mirrors the situation of international labour migration and the labour market for construction site activities in general, which is reviewed in Wells (1996). Since 1990 considerable pressure has been exerted in Germany on that part of the labour market which is related to construction site activities. This pressure was the result of a new international migration movement. It was triggered by a surplus workforce without prospects who saw their only chance of securing a employment in a migration to the North or West. Stalker (1994 pp 29-33) has drawn attention to the high thresholds of ties to the home country and familiar culture which have first to be overcome before such migration movements arise. Yet quite often migration is nothing but the result of recruitment for work places which cannot be filled with domestic labour any more (Gross 1992 pp 49-50, Chies 1994 pp 47-8). According to the experience of the past 100 years (cf. Lutz 1990) as well as to recent findings (cf. Stalker 1994 pp33-4) the migration of such workforces is often aimed at construction sites. The high interest of construction companies in the recruitment of migrants, too, for activities on construction sites in Germany was the result of the construction boom which started in Germany after unification in 1990. At the same time a situation arose in which some of the legally binding regulations of the labour market and of construction site activities became invalid in practice. The actors quite simply did not adhere to them any longer, and the authorities were unable to enforce the adherence to the legal norms or even to control them. This for instance concerned the limitation on the number of foreign labour that was permitted to be employed as contract workers or by contracting companies, as well as the prescribed wage principles or the regulation that vacant jobs had first to be advertised on the home labour market before permission for placing them with a foreign enterprise was given. Apart from that, the productivity of these migrants was clearly lower than that of local labour, since many of them had little construction site experience. But the weak market position of migrants made it possible for most of them to be paid far below their productivity. Quite often they were even simply cheated out of their promised payment (IG BSE 1995). Companies that made use of these workers gained a cost advantage that could not be caught up with. For the migrants in many cases this meant an exploitative payment due to currency decline; especially for those from Eastern countries of origin, however, it was still sufficient to secure their own subsistence and that of their families at home.