ABSTRACT
Facing redundancies seems to be a recurrent problem for industrial areas. The rigidity of the cost of labour and various forms of institutional regulation of the wage relation are said to compromize company profitability and to determine a greater increase in industrial unemployment. Industrial unemployment is explained as the result of regulatory deficits that emerge from the failure of institutions to compose the divergent interests between capital and labour expressed in the wage relationship. Other accounts of industrial unemployment have been provided, from a micro-economic perspective, by the efficiency wage models. Teesside and Brindisi are both facing, although with different intensity, similar challenges of industrial restructuring and employment change following the crisis of their dominant industries. In Brindisi, the corporatist model of governance regulates labour market dynamics. The chapter also provides an outline of this book.
