Construction has always lain at the heart of civilized endeavour, providing not only immediate needs such as shelter, water and heating but also the infrastructure for future growth and social improvement. In both the developed and developing world it remains a mass employer. This study, edited by Roderick Lawrence and Edmundo Werna, seeks to explore how the concept of “decent work,” as enunciated by the ILO’s Director General in 1999, is understood and acted upon within the developing world’s construction industry. The central thesis of the study is that the success or failure of the ILO’s endeavours will largely be determined by the attitudes of local government. In their introduction to the book, Lawrence and Werna argue that, with globalization, “both power and management have been decentralized to the local level almost everywhere.” To explore this thesis, and commitment to the concept of “decent work,” three case studies were undertaken – Bulawayo in Zimbabwe (by Beacon Mbiba and Michael Ndubiwa), Dar es Salaam in Tanzania (by Jill Wells) and Santo Andre in Brazil (by Mariana Gil). The three cases studies that lay at the core of this book make for grim reading. As the concluding summary in the book’s conclusion makes clear, the “concept of decent work was only known and applied in one of the three local authorities: Santo Andre.” Even here, as Gil’s case study observes, 80 per cent of the construction workforce was engaged in the informal economy with the City Council showing “no concern about formalizing these jobs or guaranteeing social protection of the workers involved.” Things were bleaker in the other two cities, both of which were experiencing a process of general economic decline that was forcing more and more into the informal economy. Wells, in her study of Dar es Salaam, states that the construction sector had become a refuge for those displaced from other sectors of the economy, including retrenched public servants. In all three cities, underemployment – and insecurity of employment – appears to be the norm. Everywhere, local governments were outsourcing work to private contractors who were, in turn, generally engaging their workers as “self-employed” sub-contractors. This state of affairs has led to a general deterioration in conditions of employment. While this study usefully explores an area of work that is central to the lives of hundreds of millions it does suffer from some methodological and conceptual problems. The reasons behind the choice of Bulawayo, Dar es Salaam and Santo Andre as case studies are never explained. Presumably it has something to do with the ILO’s sponsorship of the study. If so, this should have been stated. Certainly the study would have benefited from the inclusion of case studies from the Middle East and Asia. Conceptually, the central thesis that local governments are becoming more important, both economically and in shaping employment relations, is unproven. Only four pages (pp. 60-63) are explicitly devoted to discussing this, and then only at a general level. Instead, it could be argued, that local government remains the weakest and most vulnerable layer of government with a slender financial basis. Significantly, the findings of two of the case studies (that of Bulawayo and Dar es Salaam) are at odds with the book’s thesis. Mbiba and Ndubiwa observe that, in Bulawayo, the local government has lost power and authority in recent years. To maintain tight control of the city the Mugabe government has appointed a “resident Minister” to whom the Mayor and the Council report. Financially, the city is “under threat” with residents, local businesses and even government departments unable to pay the property tax that sustains …