Abstract

The job classification of the metalworking sector, defined in 1973 in the National Collective Bargaining Agreement, which in our country concerns about 1.6 million workers, remained almost unchanged for about 50 years, until the recent agreement of 2021. This is a turning-point agreement that aims to support significant innovation in the Italian manufacturing system through various interventions. What are the reasons for such a long duration of the 1973 job classification? What are the innovations of the new 2021 framework? This paper seeks an answer to these two questions by proposing a long-term analysis (from 1973 to today) of the main variables that affect the professional system: technological development, organisational models, work systems, workers’ skills, industrial relations. The analysis shows that, while new technologies and work organisation evolve in parallel and rapidly, generating new production systems, the evolution of professional roles is instead slower, and reflects both the inertia of the social conception of professions, and the slowness with which the new systems spread among companies. Furthermore, the regulation of industrial relations does not directly follow the new production systems and new jobs, but rather develops according to variable patterns, linked to the cultural and political orientations of social actors.