Bob The Builder’s Broken. Can We Fix Him?

More than 4 in 5 UK tradespeople (84%) say they’ve experienced some form of mental health problem due to work, such as stress, anxiety or depression. 

Every year, construction workers commit suicide due to mental health (MH) disorders. Labourers in Australia and the United Kingdom have suicide rates 2 and 3.7 times higher than their overall national averages for all sectors (Albert P.C. Chan et al., 2020)

Answer: The same social virus causing the global mental health pandemic: Subhuman low pay of the basic workforce keeping people in a multigenerational cycle of poverty – low level of personal and professional development, leading to low level of awareness, high level of trauma and adverse childhood experiences, and high mental illness rates.

Poor employees can’t afford the time or the luxury to invest in their personal and professional development or in their children’s higher education.

Low level of personal development leads to low interpersonal skills and low employability in fulfilling professional careers, creating, or rather maintaining the big pool of cheap labour for future generations.

The less educated and less qualified is the majority, the bigger the interpersonal problems, and the fiercer the competition for the cheap labour force in the economy.

The bigger the cheap labour pool, the bigger the bottom line of the employers. The quicker the cheap labour force breaks down, ideally within the first 6 months of the probation period, the better for the employer who doesn’t have to foot the bill for their employees’ destroyed health.

And lastly, let’s not forget, the bigger the interpersonal problems, the bigger the illness industry and the bigger the bottom line of the ‘solution’ providers.

It is a win-win-lose scheme. The corporate world creates the biggest market for the healthcare and pharma industry – win-win, and the little guy/gal at the bottom foot the bill (lose).

And if that wasn’t bad enough, it is the little guy with its poor pay the one paying with their taxes the big corporate healthcare industry hiding behind ‘charity’ status, to offer them ‘free mental health support’, while those giant profit makers avoid tax altogether, get governmental grants to develop obscenely large tax-free property portfolios, to then rent as ‘affordable housing’ to their low paid victims ending addicted, mentally broken and homeless… Paid, of course, from the little guy’s tax contribution from which the big guy is excepted.

If you wondered how we ended in not one but three crisis: mental health, cost of living and housing crisis, this is how. The big corporations are working to the bone the little guy while asking for more ‘productivity at work’. When the little guy breaks down, they then act as the ‘saviour’; open a ‘charitable’ trust arm and get access to the public purse, to which they’ve contributed zilch, to employ a battalion of more low paid workers, making them ‘big employers’, thus giving them access to more grants and more tax reliefs… And in so doing, as by hazard, becoming the biggest social landlords with no money of their own and no bank debt like the little guy, but with a mammoth tax-free property wealth portfolio with which no little guy could ever compete with, and of which him and his next generations will become dependent of.

But I digress. Let’s look at what the ‘official sources’ say about it.

The NHS admitted that the workplace-related factors contributing to poor MH are:

• unrealistic deadlines
• job insecurity
• complicated relationships with colleagues
• inadequate managerial support
• bullying and harassment

Bullying, drug and alcohol consumption are identified as critical factors to the poor MH of construction workers. (Hamed Golizadeh et al., 2023)

One in five construction employees have suffered from bullying in the last year, impacting their mental health.

In male dominated trades where ‘toughen up and get on with it’ culture with emotional abuse hiding behind ‘banter’, admitting to being bullied by colleagues and suffering from poor mental health as a result, is one of the most emasculating things. So they find relief and silent consolation behind alcohol and drugs.

Other reasons behind mental illness amongst construction workers (and all low paid jobs):

Emotional and physical exhaustion created by work-related stress.

(Michie, 2002)

Interpersonal relationships. “Conflicts in interpersonal relationships in the construction workplace can range from momentary disagreements and disrespectful behaviours from co-workers or supervisors to heated arguments. In addition to the workers having interpersonal relationships with their own teams, they also require interpersonal relationships with different subcontractors working on sites at the same time” (Hamed Golizadeh et al., 2023).

In a recent article, we find the bigger picture of poor interpersonal relationships – aka ‘conflict at work’:

“Conflict costs the UK £28.5 billion a year – or £1,000 for each employee. This includes everything from a disagreement with a colleague or manager that makes you less productive, to more formal grievances or disciplinary procedures.”

Adrian Wakeling, ACAS Senior Policy Adviser

The study prepared for ACAS by Professor Richard Saundry of the University of Sheffield Management School and Professor Peter Urwin of the Centre for Employment Research, University of Westminster, rings the alarm bells:

“Close to 10 million people experienced conflict at work. Of these, over half suffer stress, anxiety or depression as a result; just under 900,000 took time off work; nearly half a million resigned, and more than 300,000 employees were dismissed.”

I think this study alone has proven my earlier points: low pay leads to poor self-development; poor self-development leads to poor interpersonal relationships – aka ‘conflicts’ at work and at home; conflicts lead to mental health issues and family breakdown. Family breakdowns lead to childhood trauma, which leads to poor self-development, low education, and again… poor pay… Need I continue?

Disfranchisement of the employee. The lower on the hierarchical structure in work and the society, the lower our say on what we do and how we do it, the higher the impact on mental health and wellbeing.

According to the Job Demand-Control-Support (JDC-S) model, occupations that are simultaneously high in demands, and low in support and control are perceived as the most stressful occupations and could lead to the most damaging health outcomes (Michie, 2002).

In conclusion, while poor Bob the Builder cannot be expected to fix this colossal mess we found ourselves in, it plants a big societal construction danger sign: industries with low pay, low job security, and low work conditions are the highest public health dangers.

First, because they amount to the majority of the workforce globally:

• the construction industry with 4 in 5 workers suffering from work-induced mental illness
• the healthcare, housing and community mental health support industry, mostly led by big corporations hiding behind complex legal organisational branches with charitable status, commissioned by the NHS ‘to take off the NHS burden’ and offer a ‘place-based support’ – hiring subhumanly low paid employees as support workers on a “lived experience” qualification basis. Meaning, people whose mental health was destroyed by other industries, ‘repurposed’ by the job centres as the most cost-effective solution to tackle both unemployment and cheap mental health support labour to fix the mental health pandemic caused by this very model of employment.
• Big corporations such as Amazon where the warehouse and delivery employees literally pee in a bottle because their work conditions are equal to a concentration camp (to see the work conditions of Amazon employees watch this documentary).

Secondly, because they are the lowest paid workforce, and therefore can’t afford to invest in personal development, good quality private mental health support and professional education. They then rely on the NHS, funded by the little guy taxpayer, to which the big corporations contribute little to nothing, yet causing the biggest public healthcare bill.

Thirdly, because they are the less protected by employment law. Most of the workers in these industries are hired on the common trend of ‘hire to fire’, either on a 0 hour contract base, temp contracts, or on a permanent basis, but given the poor work conditions never making it pass the 6 months’ probation period to benefit from the employment law protection. The only claims an employee can make during their probation period being discrimination for protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 and whistleblowing in public interest.

And even then, it is a David vs Goliath battle, where the employee is swamped in corporate doublespeak deniability, which in their broke and broken state don’t have the mental and financial resources to take the fight through the courts.

They then end on the NHS mental health caseload and on disability benefits, being ‘supported’ to return asap to work by equally poorly paid and poorly trained support workers and ‘work coaches’, offering them the same jobs and work conditions that brought them in that situation to begin with. Until the employee can no longer function and ends on life-long disability, or addicted and homeless, and back into the system of ‘mental health community reablement support’ delivered by low paid, low trained staff, themselves subject to the same work conditions.

By putting an end to the employment racket overworking, underpaying and overtaxing the little guy while giving tax gifts and tax grants to the abuser of the little guy – being Bob the builder, the overworked NHS nurse, the charity support worker, the teacher, the bus driver, or the poor farmer – all brought to suicidal ideation, family breakdowns, childhood traumas and mental disability, if not to outright suicide by this neofeudal capitalism.

What can Bob the Builder, the NHS nurse, the farmer, the bus driver, and the overstretched support worker do in the meantime? Short of a full-blown social revolution demanding fair pay and humane work conditions, the only available option is for them to invest in their own mental health and self-development and claim it as a tax credit, just as the big guy does.

Unfortunately, there is no saviour coming to help us “deal with our mental health conditions”. We need to pull ourselves by the bootstraps, admit to our limitations, go seek an honest and down to earth support that empowers us with the self-knowledge and tools lacking from our formal education. Do the work (the inner-work), and come the other side better equipped, thanks to those challenges. And then we stand a chance to collectively build a better world through the power of personal transformation. Basically, we have to become our own and each other’s Bob the Builders in a world where everything is falling apart.

© 2023 Gratiela Rosu – CWS Mental Health