‘Hardly a cause for tears’, Job Insecurity and Occupational Psychology Culture in Italy : Oral Narratives from the Falck Steelworks in Sesto San Giovanni (Milan)

The chapter investigates the making of occupational psychology in Italy in relation with deindustrialization processes, outlining a research on Sesto San Giovanni. A medium size city at the outskirt of Milan, Sesto was a major hub of heavy industry from the start of the 20th century until the end of the 1990s. The research focused on the closing of the Falck company - an important steel producer based in Sesto - and collected 50 interviews with Falck employees. Drawing on these narratives, the chapter examines not only the workers reaction but also the managers reaction to the shut-down; moreover, addresses a special program, launched at the beginning of the 1990s, under the title of the “Falck Observatory”. An initiative of the Falck Human Resources Direction with the participation of the trade unions and the Lombardy Agency for Employment, the Observatory was created to help redundancies from Falck finding an alternative job.