I did say in comparison to Chinese workers.
To be honest, wholly reimbursable contracts are the exceptions rather than the normal these days precisely because of the problem of contractors stretching jobs out.
Most modern contracts are on a fixed price or measured basis, meaning the construction company is either paid one lump sum, or paid a certain amount of money per unit of work done.
In either case, it makes no sense for companies to stretch timetables as that just needlessly increases their costs while doing nothing to boost their revenue.
From what I know of the industry, labour disputes are a major cause of project delays in western countries, where Unions stage walk outs or overtime bans or other similar non-sense over petty and inconsequential things, and often effectively hold companies to ransom.
Saying that, I don't think China's current labour force, especially for menial workers, everything is quite right either, as their are far too many cases of workers getting cheated out of pay, or being made to work in unsafe or simply bad conditions.
I think the key to efficiency and success is all down to balance. In the west, the laws and rules favour Union far far too much. They need to be reigned way back so they become a means for workers to protect themselves against bad employers, rather than as a means for bad employees to extort and harass good employers as it does far too often now.
Conversely, in China, workers does need a little more bargaining power and protection against bad employers.
It is the nature of the construction industry worldwide, that a large part of the business is to try and screw your contractors and sub contractors down on the fees. Most of it on account of completion quality and schedule.
It is a fact, that most project managers get their jobs, not so much for their technical construction skills, but for the additional skill of being able to squeeze the costs as hard as possible.
Needless to say, that the biggest firms have the strongest hand and hardest squeezers, while it is the smallest contractors/sub contractors/labourers that end up bearing the brunt of the squeeze.
