Geoffrey White - Böcker

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 for a neglect of the essentials of health and safety, the industry, its managers and its workforce face multiple challenges. This book brings an international lens to address those challenges, looking particularly at the diverse ways in which answers have been found to manage safe and productive employment practices and effective employment relations within the framework of client demands for timely and cost-effective project completions. Whilst context, history and contractual frameworks may all militate against a careful attention to human resource issues this makes them even more deserving of attention.Work and Labor Relations in Construction aims to share understanding of best practice in the industries associated with construction and related activities, recognizing that effective work organization and good standards of employee relations will vary from one location to another. It acknowledges the real difficulties encountered by workers in parts of the developing world and the quest for improvement and awareness of some of the worst hazards and current practices. This book is both critical and analytical in approach and seeks to alert readers to the need for change. Aimed at addressing practical issues within the construction industry from a theoretical and empirical standpoint, it will be of value to those interested in the built environment, employment relations and human resource management.

This portrait of Santa Isabel in over 600 pictures shows an island transformed by its colonial history yet maintaining a confident and distinctive identity within Solomon Islands and the Pacific Island region.Santa Isabel is one of the largest islands that make up the island nation of Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific. Politically it is now one of nine provinces, each with its own variation of a shared history. In a country divided among many Christian denominations, Isabel is distinctive for its early acceptance of the Anglican Church, which united most of the island and its six language groups by the 1920s and then shaped its history up to the present.This book traces Santa Isabel history through a selection of the many hundreds of pictures of the island made first by Europeans and increasingly by its own people. These begin with the drawings and paintings of voyagers from the late 18th century, gradually succeeded by photos from the 1860s onwards showing the arrival of missionaries, traders and warships. From the 1900s there are photos made by the Europeans who established plantations on Isabel and colonial officers asserting British colonial authority. However, the pictorial record is dominated by photos from the Anglican Melanesian Mission. The Second World War, portrayed mainly by military photos, was followed closely by economic and political developments leading up to Solomon Islands independence in 1978 – developments portrayed in both church and government photos. Photos of more recent social, ceremonial and political activities show the unique combination of church, chiefs and local government in Isabel life. A renewed interest in local culture in the 21st century is revealed through photos of festivals and cultural research by both visiting and local researchers as Isabel people explore the possibilities of tourism, resource extraction and environmental conservation.

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 for a neglect of the essentials of health and safety, the industry, its managers and its workforce face multiple challenges. This book brings an international lens to address those challenges, looking particularly at the diverse ways in which answers have been found to manage safe and productive employment practices and effective employment relations within the framework of client demands for timely and cost-effective project completions. Whilst context, history and contractual frameworks may all militate against a careful attention to human resource issues this makes them even more deserving of attention.Work and Labor Relations in Construction aims to share understanding of best practice in the industries associated with construction and related activities, recognizing that effective work organization and good standards of employee relations will vary from one location to another. It acknowledges the real difficulties encountered by workers in parts of the developing world and the quest for improvement and awareness of some of the worst hazards and current practices. This book is both critical and analytical in approach and seeks to alert readers to the need for change. Aimed at addressing practical issues within the construction industry from a theoretical and empirical standpoint, it will be of value to those interested in the built environment, employment relations and human resource management.