Occupational Capitalism: A Commentary based on Reflections of COVID-19 Preventive Measures and Health Inequity in Hong Kong Construction Industry

Construction workers in Hong Kong, like their counterparts in other countries, had fallen prey to COVID-19 during the pandemic period between 2020 to 2022. Although no death cases were reported among the infection cases at the construction site clusters in the period, the trend of the outbreak in the construction industry at that time was worrisome. Recognising these threats, construction enterprises have put in place a range of COVID-19 preventive measures to cope with the situations. But until recently (notably when facing the immense need to curb COVID-19 outbreaks and maintaining business operations), health protection of the workforce is not high on the agenda of construction enterprises. While institutional and historical developments of the industry and to some extent, individual workers’ tendency for reckless health behaviours may have brought about this neglect, we contend that this workers’ health protection inadequacy is due to the phenomenon of occupational capitalism in the construction industry. Occupational capitalism refers to the idea of occupational exploitation and purposeful neglect of health protection for workforce in the pursuit of capital accumulation. In this commentary, it is argued that occupational capitalism is a fundamental cause of health inequity and the fight against COVID-19 in construction industry. As a fundamental cause, occupational capitalism (a) influences the ways multiple diseases interact that give rise to poor health outcomes; (b) increases disease risk factors for the workers thereby affecting their health outcomes; (c) restricts the access to flexible resources which the workers can use to minimise health risk; and (d) reproduces health inequity among the workforce over time even though intervention has been introduced. In this commentary, I explain these occupational capitalism effects based on the operations of Hong Kong construction industry. The commentary highlights the fact that to improve health outcomes beyond current COVID-19 pandemic, interventions should address health inequity among construction workforce.