This international comparison based on an in-depth field survey - with monographs of thirty companies and twelve training institutions - will give a new dimension and concrete understanding of the relationship between training and employment, work organization and education. Indeed, it clearly highlights major social characteristics in each country, with significantly different roles of Central Government and Local Authorities, big business and small businesses as well as trade-unions. Therefore the issue of centralization and decentralization in relation to labor flexibility can be approached in an original manner. It shows in particular the interest to pay attention to the size of firms and the characteristics of the organization of production. The Construction Industry is particularly interesting for its structural productive flexibility, a constituent and constitutive dimension due to ever changing localization of production sites. This study investigates its transformations, divergent or convergent, in a period of continuous crisis and brutal opening to international competition, during the Thatcher decade that provoked unprecedented restructurings. The search for greater flexibility has proved to be the center of these changes with the downgrading of existing wage protections and struggles around the training of skilled workers and weakening of their status.
