Subsidies for the Steel: Are they really the problem?

摘要

It may seem confusing to say that what the steel industry had reached in 2002 in terms of volume of production was achieved with less than one third of the workforce which was working in this industry about thirty years ago. The number of workers in the steel industry in 1975, who produced 644 million tons of crude steel were 2.223 million workers while in 2002 only 796 thousand workers produced 902 million tons of crude steel that is up by 258 million tons. This increase in production, despite the reduced number of workers, may be attributed to the wide technological developments taking place in this industry, which have made the worker's productivity double several times compared to what it had been thirty years ago. This is what may interpret the theory that the accelerated growth of steel was achieved by the technology development more than by what it can be achieved through increasing the number of workers This has also changed the view to the steel industry from the point of labour, which was then prevailing when most of the steel industries which were owned by the state, to the point of attracting the private investments looking for profit when most of the steel industries have been transferred to the private sector. The theory of a development with no employments has imposed itself as a fact in the steel industry, but this could not be achieved had there been no alternatives represented in the growing dependence upon development of skills and upon the growing technological development achieved already in this industry.