Before the outbreak of hostilities in the territories, some
63,000 Palestinians worked in the building sector in Israel,
22,000 with work permits and 41,000 illegally. Most of them
worked in what is known as "wet" labor, which include the
initial stages of the building process such as tiling,
plastering, ironbending and scaffolding. There are currently
only a few thousand Palestinian laborers working in
Israel.
The absence of laborers is causing a lot of disruptions to
the Israeli building industry, and Israeli employees, most
of whom work at the more advanced stages of the building
process, are also affected by the current situation.
According to Raanan Cohen, the former Minister of Labor, the
solution to the shortage of Palestinian labor lies in
training Israeli workers, especially unemployed ones, in
building skills, including "wet" labor. Building contractors
reject this idea. They argue that Israelis have no interest
in working in the building sector. The reason for this, says
Sam Olfiner, the new President of the Contractors
Organization, is that "no Jewish mother wants her son to
become an unskilled building laborer. We therefore have no
choice but to import foreign workers."
However, Israeli society is paying a very heavy price for
the importation of foreign workers, and so the Housing
Ministry has come up with a different solution: manufactured
building. For the next two years, we will, unfortunately, be
dependent on thousands of foreign workers, even if our plans
to train Israeli workers are a success, but in the longer
term, the building sector will have to gradually prepare
itself for full scale manufactured building. Every Housing
Minister has expressed support for this system of housing
construction, but no progress was ever made towards this
direction in practice.
What is manufactured building? Shmuel Pan, the head of the
Surveyors' Association explains as follows: "Manufactured
building includes a whole range of technical methods, which
aim to reduce the need for professional manpower on the one
hand, and to improve the quality of building on the other.
Building according to this method also takes much less time,
and working conditions on building sites are also much
better. Industrialized methods of building are based on
accuracy, technical wherewithal and organizational
ability."
An unsuccessful attempt at manufactured building was made in
Israel during the 70s. This failure was attributed to low
standards and too much of an amateur approach. For this
reason the term "manufactured building" became synonymous
with bad quality building in the eyes of Israelis. In many
western countries, on the other hand, it is very common and
considered an advanced and modern method of construction.
The Director-General of the Housing Ministry, Shlomo Ben-
Eliyahu, denied that Israel has totally failed in its
attempts to introduce manufactured building: "So far we have
made moves in this direction, but there is still a long way
to go. It is commonly used for the construction of public
buildings, such as schools, offices, hotels, industrial
buildings and so on. Its use for the construction of
residential property, on the other hand, is, unfortunately,
still limited."
Loni Davidovitch, the head of the Planning and Engineering
Department of the Housing Ministry, explains how
industrialization serves to improve the quality of building
construction: "It is much easier to control the quality of
construction in industrial methods than in conventional
ones. Industrialized construction does not leave much room
for human error, inaccuracies, faulty building components
and so on. In conventional methods, on the other hand, these
problems are much more prevalent, and are difficult to
detect without proper methods of quality control. Moreover,
there is no guarantee that mistakes will not be repeated."
There does seem to be general agreement amongst experts that
the quality of manufactured construction is superior.
Local and international consumer organizations support
manufactured methods of building, mainly because of the high
quality of the finished product. In the short term, the
stress on quality means that there are fewer defects that
need fixing, with all the direct and indirect costs that
this usually entails. More importantly, the accuracy and
quality of the end result do not involve higher costs.
Industrialized methods of construction also take much less
time than conventional ones.
In the long term, the superior quality of construction
guarantees more stable and aesthetic buildings. The
maintenance costs of such buildings are also lower and they
keep their value over a longer period of time. If the
industrialized method of construction has so many
advantages, why has it failed to take root in this
country?
Housing Ministry spokesmen say that contractors are
unwilling to make the heavy investment required until the
methods are proven. But until someone tries them, there is
no way to prove the methods.
Is there a solution to this vicious circle? The building
sector will only be industrialized if there is no supply of
cheap foreign labor, and if the contractors become motivated
to adopt advanced technological methods.
Manufactured Building
What is the difference between industrialized building and
conventional methods of construction? Why has everyone been
singing the praises of industrialized building for decades,
but the old methods still hold sway?
Amount of work: The National Institute for Building
Research in the Technion published an article in August 1999
about manufactured building. The authors calculated how many
years of human labor are required to build 1000 square
meters. They concluded that it took 16.5 years of labor to
build 1000 square meters of top-quality residential building
using conventional methods as opposed to 11.3 years using
the industrialized method.
Costs: Since the manufactured method is a much
quicker method of construction, it also saves a lot of
money. Moreover, using this method cuts down the need for
laborers by more than 50% compared to conventional
methods.
Internal divisions: In regular methods of
construction, internal walls usually consist of concrete
blocks, which means that it is very difficult to make
changes to the internal areas of an apartment. In
industrialized building, areas are divided by plastered
walls, which can easily be moved from place to place.
Contractors: In the manufactured method, there is
usually only one contractor doing all the work, whereas the
conventional method usually requires the involvement of a
number of separate contractors, each one in charge of a
different area: the frame, electricity, plumbing etc.
Infrastructure: In prefabricated housing, all the
components come ready to absorb the various infrastructures.
In traditional building methods, the preparatory work for
infrastructures only takes place in the process of
building.
The finish: In the industrialized method, the walls
come complete with external coating. In conventional
methods, the external walls are only coated after the
building is finished.
There is only one aspect in which the conventional methods
of building are to be preferred to manufactured ones: it is
easy to build additions to the side or top of conventional
buildings. A prefabricated building, on the other hand, is a
self-contained, complete entity, and it is therefore much
more difficult to make changes to it.
Why, then, despite all its supporters, is industrialized
building not part of our landscape?
These are the facts: over the past 30 years there has been
no substantial change in the time it takes to build an
apartment. On average it took two years, and it still takes
that long. The reason for this is that Housing Ministers
have talked about industrialization, but acted against it in
practice.
Raoul Teitelboim wrote an article in the magazine
Emda in the early 70s, about the lack of
industrialized building techniques. He concluded that there
would be no industrialization for as long as there was a
steady supply of cheap human labor. Building contractors are
neither in favor nor against industrialization. Their only
concern is to make the biggest possible profit, and if the
State enables them to hire cheap workers, they will not be
interested in industrialization.
When the West Bank and Gaza Strip were conquered in 1967,
the border opened up to cheap Palestinian labor, and the
much talked-about industrialization was put on hold. In
1995, when the Palestinians were put under curfew, the
contractors were in a very difficult situation, but the
government and its Housing Minister (also Ben Eliezer at the
time) just responded by importing foreign workers. Recently
too, the former Housing Minister was responsible for
importing more foreign workers, at the same time praising
the wonders of industrialization!
This is also the reason for the shortage of Israelis in the
building sector. As long as there are sufficient foreign
workers willing to work for less than the legal minimum
wage, there is no need to raise salaries to tempt Israelis
or to bother studying the esoteric technologies of
manufacturing. After a lot of hullabaloo and meetings, the
solution is always to import more foreign workers.
The Minister of Labor, who is responsible for and supports
finding Israelis employment, is also the one distributing
licenses to contractors to import more foreign workers,
turning these people into slaves. He fails to enforce the
legal minimum wage and encourages the use of cheap foreign
labor, instead of the employment of Israelis for a decent
wage.
