Larrikins in the labour market: masculinity, class struggle and union leadership in the NSW building industry

Various institutions including employer groups, the media, and legal tribunals have described the industrial behaviour of building workers as macho, violent, greedy, and excessively militant. This paper challenges this view by incorporating the historical construction of masculinity within a class analysis to illuminate the ambiguity of ruling-class conceptions of building workers and to suggest that they stem from the construction of a public profile of the workers that is ideologically based and anti-worker. This paper argues that the behaviour of building workers is a strategy that reproduces and defines leadership within this industry. An analysis of a rally at Parliament House shortly after the election of the Howard Government in 1996 is used to illustrate the issues raised in this paper.