ABSTRACT
The development of work relations at Fiat sets the trend for the whole of Italy and the state of power relations at Fiat mirrors the situation all over the country. The most important foreign location is in Brazil where Fiat's share of the market amounts to just under 15 per cent. In its Italian works the company produces the Lancia as well as the Fiat models. From the end of 1968 Fiat had been, if not the most advanced then at least the most important, hot-point in that particular climate of industrial relations which characterised Italy in the seventies. On this basis, and parallel to the attack on the area of industrial relations, it was possible to take away a large part of the union power of intervention in labour organisation. It was possible to programme and organise enormous technological and organisational restructuring, outside of any union participation and control.
