ABSTRACT
The steel industry generally is becoming increasingly segmented into two types of producers. First are those found in the developed countries, which have turned to new types of steel and more value-added activities in processing. In turn, they have increasingly left production of standard steels to producers from the developing countries, which have certain competitive advantages, most notably in labour cost factors (ILO 1992). Technological change in the industry has fundamentally altered the way in which both iron & steel are produced. The major changes have been in the main functional areas of (blast) furnaces, the casting process, the rolling phase, all allied to computerization of production and energy conservation. The result for the workforce has been that an industry that once hired on the basis of biceps-size now has to recruit and retrain workers into using a more cognitive process. That is, brain power is replacing brawn.
