ABSTRACT
Over the past few decades, major restructuring in many regions dependent on traditional heavy and basic capital goods industries such as coal, steel and shipbuilding has led to massive redundancies and high unemployment for the workers who have lost their jobs from these dominant employers. In such old industrial areas (OIAs), men, in particular, have suffered from these changes. Policies to address this decline have tended to be based on inward investment in light industries, on new and small businesses, and on the service sector. The jobs created to replace those lost have been focused on new entrants and women returners to a more flexible labour market, with new employment opportunities demanding new and different skills from those applied in the former heavy industries (Martin and Morrison, 2003; Danson et al., 2003). Many have claimed that a mismatch has developed between the skills and attributes of the redundant workers and this new economy (Lawless et al., 1997), due to problems with their employability, so that levels of unemployment and inactivity have increased.
