Always on the verge of sinking. Labour and production in the Sestri Ponente shipyard (1950-2010)

In this chapter we examine the history of the Sestri Ponente shipyard in relation to three themes: employment and labour composition; production trends and changes in the organisation of work; and workplace struggles that took place during the Republican period to guarantee the role of the workers in the company, and to avoid the closure of a highly productive shipyard. The importance of the local context in which the shipyard stands seems to go beyond the issue of employment, embracing the physiognomy of a territory in its broadest sense, embedded in cultural and communal identity processes over a long period. This identity has flourished throughout the past two centuries and has been forged around the knowledge and special skills learned and passed down through generations by the Sestri Ponente shipyard workers. Although many of its constituent elements remained intact, Sestri Ponente eventually declined as a result of economic, production, and social changes.