Laborer

• 1. Introduction

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  Laborers are the workers who physically build the world around us. Roads, bridges, tunnels, pipelines, railway tracks, buildings - these structures exist because laborers showed up, picked up their tools, and did the work. The 1st century BC engineer Vitruvius wrote that a good crew of laborers is just as valuable as any other aspect of construction. Two thousand years later, that observation still holds. Yet most people who drive across a bridge or walk into a building never think about the person who broke concrete, cleared debris, or set the formwork that made it possible. This documentary asks who laborers actually are, what they carry in their tool belts, what their work costs them in body and livelihood, and why a union laborer in the United States can out-earn a civil engineer.

• 2. The Tools of the Trade

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  A hammer, a pair of pliers with side-cutters, a utility knife, a tape measure, locking pliers, a crescent wrench, a screwdriver, a margin trowel, a carpenter's pencil or soapstone, and a tool belt with at least one pouch - these are the minimum a laborer is expected to bring to any job site. A five-gallon bucket carrying additional tools, toolbelt suspenders, a water jug, and a lunchbox round out the recommended kit. The personal investment in that basic set is real, and it belongs to the laborer, not the employer.

  Safety equipment breaks into two categories, and who pays for each matters. Hard hats, safety glasses, hearing protection, gloves, fall protection, high-visibility clothing, concrete boots, respirators, and toe guards are provided by the employer when the hazard is site-specific. Personal protective gear - full leather boots, heavy canvas or denim pants, socks, lip balm, and climate-appropriate outerwear - comes out of the laborer's own pocket.

  The question of steel-toed boots has generated genuine debate on job sites for years. Some long-time laborers avoid steel toes on the grounds that crushed toes are preferable to toes severed by crushed steel. Several studies have since found that belief to be wrong. A laborer who works at high elevation may also need climate gear that differs entirely from what they own for their home region, and in those cases employers are expected to provide it.

• 3. The Scope of the Work

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  Laborers work with blasting tools, hand tools, power tools, air tools, and small heavy equipment. They also serve as assistants to tradesmen such as equipment operators and cement masons. The list of tasks that fall within their trade is long and varied.

  Concrete work alone covers shotcrete, gunite, grouting, and formwork. Demolition means cutting concrete, breaking pavement, and removing framing members, doors, windows, wiring, and piping from building interiors. Environmental remediation and hazardous waste handling are their responsibility too, as are fencing, landscaping, and keeping a construction site clear of weeds and trash.

  Hod carrying - supplying materials to masons, plasterers, and fireproofing crews - sits alongside paving work that includes white paving formwork, traffic control, striping, and sign installation. Pipe work spans water pipe, sewer, and storm drain. Tunnel crews drill and blast. Dry utilities work means installing electrical and communications conduit. Loading and offloading construction materials rounds out the picture.

  Vitruvius noted that laborer practices have changed little over the centuries. The one significant exception is pneumatics. More recently, field technologies have been added to the mix, and laborers have been described as quick to adapt to their use.

• 4. Wages and the Union Divide

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  Manual labor in construction carries wages that are deliberately set higher than those for other types of unskilled work. The reasoning is straightforward: the work is dirty, dangerous, and demeaning, and attracting free workers requires pay that reflects those conditions.

  The gap between union and non-union laborers in the United States is striking. As of 2008, union laborers in heavy construction and highway construction earned an average of $25.47 per hour. Non-union laborers earned $13.72 per hour. That difference more than doubles take-home pay, but the union advantage extends well beyond the hourly rate.

  Union membership comes with medical insurance, vacation pay, pension plans, union representation, and access to vocational schools. When those benefits are factored in, the total compensation reached $45 per hour as of 2012. Laborers with specialized skills earn what the industry calls "over-rate" wages on top of that. In a comparison that surprises many people, union laborers' average annual earnings of $50,000 to $80,000 frequently exceeded the typical starting salary of young civil engineers, construction managers, and construction engineers, which ranged from $40,000 to $60,000 as of 2007. Laboring also remains one of the few fields where someone without a high school diploma can earn a living wage.

  One important caveat runs through all of this: laborers are rarely employed full-time year-round. The extra pay is often offset by reduced unemployment checks during idle periods and disability payments during injury recoveries. Both of those safety nets apply only to union members. Non-union laborers frequently have no unemployment or injury insurance at all.

• 5. Hazards and the Cost of the Work

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  Many laborers are severely injured or killed in accidents each year. Even a short stint in the trade commonly leaves workers with permanent conditions: hearing loss, arthritis, osteoarthritis, back injuries, eye injury, head injury, chemical burns from lime sensitivity, lung disease, missing fingernails, and skin scars.

  Alcoholism, drug use, and drug abuse are common in the trade, though most companies require drug screening for new hires. The protocols around injury and drug testing create a sharp consequence: any laborer injured on the job is immediately given a drug test, and a positive result makes them ineligible for workers' compensation benefits. Medical marijuana prescriptions have introduced a contested gray area. Some workers dismissed after failing a drug test while holding a valid prescription have subsequently been reinstated with back pay on the grounds of wrongful termination.

  The relationship between planning failures and laborer safety runs deeper than individual accidents. In construction, when planning breaks down, the standard response has been described as "throwing laborers at it." That approach can create a dangerous and chaotic situation in which injury rates climb sharply. The calculation behind large projects is a genuine balancing act between the labor hours a task requires and the efficiencies that careful engineering planning can produce - and when that balance tips, it is laborers who absorb the physical consequences.

• 6. Organized Labor and LIUNA

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  The Laborers' International Union of North America, known as LIUNA, represents laborers on both public and private projects across North America. The union's business representatives have a direct mandate to appear on-site when problems arise. A phone call and a credible reason are enough to bring a representative to a job the following morning, asking questions and demanding accountability for the mistreatment of workers.

  Some of those representatives have a particular reason to take the work personally. A number of LIUNA's business agents are former laborers who suffered injuries severe enough to end their time in the field. Their presence in the union structure connects the organization's advocacy directly to the physical toll described throughout this documentary. The wage and benefit data - the $25.47 hourly average, the $45-per-hour total compensation figure, the over-rate classifications for specialized skills - are outcomes that collective bargaining produced.