ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that whilst the industry has historically been characterised by instability, the way in which that instability has been dealt with owes much to a relatively orderly social reproduction of the labour force accruing from the wider context of the patterning of social class. The British construction industry is an industry that often seems, on the one hand to be beset with perpetual crises, and on the other to display a number of irresolvable paradoxical conundrums. The building industry is clearly not an homogenous whole, there is under the umbrella term of construction several relatively distinct and specialised markets. In the construction industry the decline of apprentice training was linked primarily to the fragmenting market structure as a result of the increasing rise of subcontracting, i.e. a way in which to hedge off the costs of the reproduction of labour onto labour itself.
