The paper discusses the growing importance of the decentralisation of production, as one capitalist response to declining profits and workers' resistance in Italian manufacturing industry. It argues that decentralisation and automation have reduced the traditional strength and quantity of male workers in large factories and have generated new sectors within the industrial working class. The paper ends with the suggestion that the labour movement needs to reshape its organisation and its strategies which erroneously still continue to reflect only the needs of the traditional mass worker.
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