ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with structural changes which production work in the German and Italian steel industries has undergone due to rationalization and societal change. It focuses on a presentation given for employee representatives and experts in the Italian Steel Industry in Sesto San Giovanni. The chapter begins with a description of changes in West German and Italian steel production. The structural changes in qualification, work organization and wage policy, which have occurred in the West German and Italian steel industries over the last 10 to 15 years, are the result of a process that had already begun at least 10 years earlier and which is not yet finished today. Far-reaching changes have occurred in both the West German and Italian steel industries; some of them have been realized fully, while the course has merely been set for others.
