Recently, Unite the Union announced the formation of a national branch for architectural workers, by incorporating the Section of Architectural Workers (SAW) into its ranks.
SAW members met in October for their annual general meeting to discuss the future of the union. At this gathering, they made the decision to move from United Voices of the World, a smaller London-based union, to Unite.
The backing of a much larger union, which organises across the country in the construction sector, will no doubt help reach a wider layer of architectural workers.
White collar?
The idea of class struggle in the architecture studio may seem odd at first. The usual depiction of architects is of well-dressed, well-paid, white-collar professionals.
This image is reinforced by a layer of celebrity architects – or ‘starchitects’ – such as Norman Foster or Bjarke Ingels. In reality, such figures are the owners and bosses of the industry, running large companies that exploit hundreds of employees.
Behind every famous architect there are teams of project architects, architectural assistants, architectural technologists, model makers, and admin staff – and potentially many more in professions such as surveying and engineering.
Overwork and low pay
These layers of workers face real difficulties. The organisation Future Architects Front (FAF) published an open letter in 2021 compiling the experiences of junior staff from across the industry.
The statistics provided are shocking. They show that 88% of respondents had worked unpaid overtime. 74% felt exploited by their employer.
It is not unheard of for architecture staff to work 60+ hours a week on a supposedly 37.5 hour contract. Weekends are similarly stolen from workers as project deadlines close in.
Despite these obvious cases of overwork, 44% of the trained architectural workers in FAF’s survey were unemployed at the time. This is due to younger workers being kept from paid work by demands for ‘experience’, forcing the existing workforce to shoulder a greater burden.
Exploitation
Alongside burnout, workers report that their wages don’t stretch far enough to cover the basics. And this is to say nothing of the proliferation of unpaid internships in the industry, used to exploit the youngest workers.
So why don’t bosses raise wages to pacify their employees? Simply put, because of the pressures of the market. Project budgets are shrinking everywhere, due to the ongoing crisis of capitalism. This leads to potential fees for architects diminishing also.
Once they’ve exhausted every avenue of unpaid labour, architecture bosses then cut existing wages and conditions in order to remain competitive, placing even greater burdens on workers.
Fight ahead
Organising within Unite will help architecture workers to resist these attacks. But this is only the first step. The struggles in our industry don’t exist in a bubble. They’re endemic to the whole construction sector – and beyond.
We must therefore push for workers’ struggles across construction and all related industries to be united and coordinated, in order to forge a militant movement that can fight for real gains for our class.
Ultimately, construction and architecture cannot be left to the profiteers. As workers, we want to be able to design beautiful buildings, functional spaces, and exciting environments for the working class. And we want decent pay, conditions, and job security.
But to meet these basic demands, we must take the market out of the equation, and replace it with public ownership, workers’ control, and a socialist plan of production. Only on this basis can we genuinely put our skills to use for the good of society.
This is what the communists are fighting for. Join us!
