Constructing Boundaries: Jewish and Arab Workers in Mandatory Palestine

Chapter 3. Construction-Competing at the Work Site

Chapter 3 Construction - Competing at the Work Site Construction demonstrates better than any other urban industry the dual process of interpenetration and separation between the Jewish and Arab sectors. The abundant availability of cheap and experienced Arab labor, in a labor-intensive industry, threatened the position of Jewish workers. This threat led the Jewish labor movement to invest much effort in erecting barriers and blocking the access of Arab workers. Building and Aliya, Building and creation, Building and cultivation. . . . In the Jewish, Zionist imagery of the period the act of building and the act of national redemption went hand in hand. Construction was central to the Zionist colonization project. To colonize the land meant to settle it, to acquire land and till it, to acquire land and establish new settlements on it. Taking hold of the land meant transforming it, cultivating it, and building on it. "Nekhasekh Salmat Beton va-Melet"-"We shall cover thee with a gown of concrete and cement," sang the pioneers to the motherland. The construction workers, the builders, were the elite of the urban workers, the urban pioneers. Construction was not merely a process of putting brick upon brick and erecting a building, it was part of a process of creation-'Binyan ve-Yetsira,' part of the process of colonization-'Binyan ve-Aliya: Construction became a central element in the economy of the Jewish settlement, not only in its imagery and pathos. It was closely linked to the large-scale Jewish immigration in multiple ways. Immigrants created the demand for increased building and supplied both the necessary labor power and the capital. Thus the sharp fluctuations in immigration and in capital import brought about extreme fluctuations in the construction industry, the ramifications of which contributed to the IN THE LABOR MARKET overall fluctuations of the Palestine economy. Economists were well aware of the unique role of construction in Palestine. In 1938, Horowitz and Hinden wrote: In Palestine, building has acted as the medium through which new purchasing power is pumped into the economic life. But this effect ... has been accomplished not by organized planning, but by an extraneous factor, the influx of capital and immigration. The new immigrants exert a continuous demand for housing, which is supplied by the capital influx. The import of capital by a small number of capitalists-who have never exceeded 12'X, of the total annual immigration-could not itself stimulate economic life. It had to be diffused among all strata of the population, and in this work of distribution, the building trades have played a leading role. An exceptionally high proportion of investment in building is paid away in wages, and these wages create a market for agricultural and industrial products. In this way, the demand for consumers' goods in Palestine has been in advance of supply, and the new capital invested in building has had an immediate impact on all branches of the country's economic life. The building trades are a temporary station through which immigration passes before it is absorbed in the more permanent branches of current production.1 Not surprisingly, construction became the urban industry in which the competition between Jewish and Arab labor was most blatant and direct , and in which the threat of substitution of Jewish labor by much cheaper Arab labor was most salient. During periods of prosperity, in which there was a large inflow of Jewish immigrants and private capital , construction expanded. New contractors appeared. They increased the competition and hence the need to cut expenses. The unlimited supply of Arab workers and their low wages seriously threatened the Jewish workers. This threat led to intense organizational efforts, aimed at closing the Jewish construction market to much cheaper Arab workers . The competition between Arab and Jewish workers, the organizational steps taken in support of the Jewish workers, the resulting confrontation and its ramifications in both communities, will be the major theme of this chapter. Construction was the industry in which there was the most interchange between the Arab and Jewish sectors. Capital was transferred from the Jewish to the Arab sector through the purchase of land for construction, through rent paid by Jewish immigrants to Arab homeowners and through the wages paid to Arab workers by both Arab and Jewish contractors who were building for the Jewish market. As noted in the previous chapter, construction was among the small number of Construction -Competing at the Work Site industries in...