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Financialisation and labour in the Australian commercial construction industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Dick Bryan ,
Michael Rafferty ,
Phillip Toner  and
Sally Wright
Dick Bryan
Affiliation:
University of Sydney, Australia
Michael Rafferty*
Affiliation:
RMIT University, Australia
Phillip Toner
Affiliation:
University of Sydney, Australia
Sally Wright
Affiliation:
University of Warwick, UK
*
Michael Rafferty, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia. Email: michael.rafferty@rmit.edu.au
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Abstract

Financialisation and financial risk have become current buzzwords, but the connections between finance and labour are not well developed. Often labour is cast simply as the distributional victim of developments like shareholder value, the privatisation of public infrastructure and labour market reform. This article engages developments in the construction industry and locates a growing financial logic inside ‘production’ and work in that sector. Through the concepts of liquidity and risk, we identify causal connections, not just parallels, between financial innovation and the reorganisation of the logic and structure of work in the Australian construction and property services industry.

Keywords

G00F36J41L23L24L74Constructionfinancialisationliquidityrisksub-contractingwork
Type
Articles
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 28 , Issue 4: Financialisation, construction work and inequality , December 2017 , pp. 500 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017

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