Fig. 9 shows the rise and fall of the petrochemical sector within the three industrial high-risk areas:
Milazzo–Valle del Mela, Augusta–Priolo, and Gela. After a dramatic increase in the period 1951–1981, total employment was halved in the years that followed.
As a result of this dramatic change, the share of the petrochemical sector in industrial and total employ-ment clearly decreased in the period 1981–2001 (see Fig. 10 and 11).
Table 48. LQs and MSIs for all petrochemical activities, 1951–2001a
Indices b Year
1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001
LQ (G/S) – 1�23 9�15 10�95 11�17 8�46
LQ (A/S) 3�13 9�92 6�97 7�59 7�16 6�45
LQ (M/S) 5�20 1�93 1�56 2�04 2�59 4�07
LQ (HRA/S) 2.85 6.76 6.71 7.52 7.30 6.49
LQ (G/I) – 0�89 10�44 13�84 13�46 9�26
LQ (A/I) 1�50 7�14 7�94 9�59 8�63 7�07
LQ (M/I) 2�50 1�39 1�78 2�58 3�12 4�46
LQ (HRA/I) 1.36 4.87 7.65 9.51 8.80 7.11
MSI (G/S) – 1�64 5�81 6�22 6�64 5�27
MSI (A/S) 3�30 7�59 4�71 4�68 5�11 4�16
MSI (M/S) 4�55 1�38 1�33 1�44 1�76 2�81
MSI (HRA/S) 2.75 5.69 4.60 4.64 4.96 4.20
MSI (G/I) – 1�87 10�63 12�72 12�45 9�14
MSI (A/I) 2�33 8�64 8�62 9�57 9�59 7�21
MSI (M/I) 3�22 1�57 2�42 2�94 3�30 4�87
MSI (HRA/I) 1.94 6.48 8.42 9.47 9.30 7.28
a The years shown in the table correspond to census years�
b The indices LQ and MSI are relative to the petrochemical sector, where G indicates the Gela high-risk area, A indicates the Augusta–Priolo high-risk area, M indicates the Milazzo–Valle del Mela high-risk area, HRA indicates all three high-risk areas, S indicates Sicily and I indicates Italy�
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
Table 49. LQs and MSIs for oil-derivative and refining activities, 1951-2001a
Indices b Year
1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001
LQ (G/S) – 9�92 32�37 29�56 17�04 12�93
LQ (A/S) – 10�84 2�03 3�57 6�99 6�73
LQ (M/S) – 9�63 5�55 5�59 4�88 7�18
LQ (HRA/S) – 10�46 9�59 9�31 8�78 8�14
LQ (G/I) – 12�87 143�51 142�67 83�36 61�73
LQ (A/I) – 14�06 9�02 17�25 34�18 32�15
LQ (M/I) – 12�49 24�61 26�97 23�85 34�30
LQ (HRA/I) – 13�56 42�50 44�93 42�96 38�89
MSI (G/S) – 13�22 20�54 16�80 10�13 8�06
MSI (A/S) – 8�29 1�38 2�20 4�99 4�34
MSI (M/S) – 6�91 4�72 3�93 3�31 4�96
MSI (HRA/S) – 8�80 6�57 5�74 5�97 5�27
MSI (G/I) – 27�12 146�06 131�11 77�09 60�88
Indices b Year
1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001
MSI (A/I) – 17�02 9�79 17�20 37�96 32�80
MSI (M/I) – 14�18 33�56 30�67 25�22 37�44
MSI (HRA/I) – 18�05 46�75 44�77 45�43 39�82
a The years shown in the table correspond to census years�
b The indices LQ and MSI are relative to the petrochemical sector, where G indicates the Gela high-risk area, A indicates the Augusta–Priolo high-risk area, M indicates the Milazzo–Valle del Mela high-risk area; HRA indicates high-risk areas, S indicates Sicily and I indicates Italy�
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
Fig. 9. Petrochemical employees in the three industrial high-risk areas, 1951–2001
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
Fig. 10. Total and sectoral employment in the high-risk petrochemical areas of Sicily, 1951–2001
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
Table 49 (concluded)
Fig. 11. Petrochemical employment expressed as a per cent of industrial employment and total employment
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
Fig. 12 and 13 show that, after 1981, no substitution effect – that is, the transfer of the workforce expelled from the petrochemical sector to other industrial sectors – took place. This means that, even though other manufacturing activities maintained on the whole about the same level (Fig. 13), show-ing a small increase in the latest period, total industrial employment decreased because of its reduction in the petrochemical sector (Fig. 12). During the period 1981–2001, employment in the petrochemi-cal industry decreased by 7137 individuals, while employment in other industries increased by 1145 individuals; this implies that the adoption of labour saving technologies in the transformation of the oil processing cycle caused a net destruction of about 6000 jobs in the total manufacturing sector during this period: a loss of 21.2%.
As a result, the sign of correlation between petrochemical employment and employment in other industries changed (from positive to negative). In the scatter diagram (Fig. 13), the positive slope for the period 1951−1981 becomes negative in the following period, 1981−2001, because of the decrease in the number of employees in the petrochemical industry; this decrease is associated with a slight increase in the number of employees in other parts of the manufacturing sector. In conclusion, jobs lost in the petrochemical industry have not been absorbed by the local productive sector, giving rise to new unemployment.
The transformation of the local productive sectors is evident when considering the impressive reduc-tion in the share of cultivated land compared with total land in the three areas (see Table 50). This is a characteristic that the three high-risk areas share with the whole region.
It is worth noting that the composition of the manufacturing sector underwent a dramatic change, with a huge increase in the metallurgy, manufacture of machinery and equipment and plastics industries (apart from the petrochemical industry) and an important decrease in the most traditional activities.
As Table 51 shows, the decrease in traditional activities was particularly severe in the expansionary phase of petrochemical activities (1951–1981), while in the period 1981–2001 a slight increase (in terms of both firms and workers) followed. On the other hand, the expansion of the manufacture of machinery and equipment and plastics production sectors accompanied the growth of the petrochemi-cal sector and outlived its following shrinkage.
Fig. 12. Petrochemical employment versus employment in other industries, 1951–2001
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
Fig. 13. Number of employees in petrochemical and other industries, 1951–2001
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
Table 50. Share of cultivated land
Area Share of cultivated land, by year
1970 1980 1990 2000
Augusta–Priolo 0�77 0�68 0�58 0�48
Gela 0�62 0�63 0�55 0�47
Milazzo–Valle del Mela 0�70 0�63 0�52 0�37
Sicily 0�75 0�66 0�62 0�50
Source: Adapted from Istat data: agriculture census�
Table 51. Employees and firms (manufacturing activities), for select years 1951–2001
Productive activity Number of firms and workers, for select years
1951 1981 2001
Firms Workers Firms Workers Firms Workers
Manufacturing sector 2 559 6 640 2 595 28 160 3 060 22 168
Food and beverages 465 2 098 302 1 148 424 1 357
Textiles, clothing, footwear and leather goods 935 1 459 244 453 111 255
Wood products, paper products and printing 588 1 122 486 1 052 487 1 180
Metallurgy, machinery and equipment,
petrochemical and rubber 571 1 961 1 534 25 042 1 959 18 486
Metallurgy – – 10 529 9 233
Machinery and equipment 429 805 1 315 8 542 1 705 10 242
Petrochemical 23 737 50 14 267 70 7 130
Plastics industry and other manufacturing activities – – 29 465 79 890
Plastics – – 20 216 30 463
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1981 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
By using the relative firms’ dimension index (RFD), which is the ratio between the average dimension (workers per business) of local firms and the corresponding regional average, it is possible to compare the structural characterization of the industrialization processes that took place in the three high-risk petro-chemical areas with that of Sicily for each industrial activity. Letting RFD indicate the number of workers in the petrochemical industry versus all Sicilian manufacturing sectors, W indicate the number of work-ers, F indicate the number of firms and poles indicate the high-risk contaminated areas, the following expression is obtained:
RFD = (W/F) Petrochemical poles/(W/F) Sicily
where RFD greater than one implies a larger average number of workers for local enterprises than for regional enterprises.
Table 52, Fig. 14 and Fig. 15 show that traditional activities had a larger average number of workers per business in the Sicilian high-risk areas than they did in Sicily as a whole in 1951. During the expansion of the petrochemical industry, RFD was lower than one, witnessing a relative reduction in the size of a
firm’s workforce within these activities; in 1991–2001, parallel to a decline in petrochemical employ-ment, employment in the food and beverage, wood products, paper products, and printing sectors increased in terms of the average size of firms (Fig. 14). The increase in the workforce in the metal-lurgy, manufacture of machinery and equipment, and plastics industries, covering the whole period 1971–2001 (Fig. 15), similar to the pattern of the petrochemical industry, marks the structural change in local economies.
Table 52. RFD, by manufacturing activity
Productive activity (W/F) Petrochemical poles/(W/F) Sicily
1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001
Manufacturing sector 1�14 1�75 2�76 2�82 2�14 2�15
Food and beverages 1�14 1�01 0�88 0�81 0�89 1�00
Textile, clothing, footwear and leather goods 1�06 0�86 0�74 0�81 0�68 0�71
Wood products, paper products and printing 1�06 1�00 0�95 0�87 1�02 1�03
Metallurgy, machinery and equipment, petrochemical and rubber 1�19 2�75 3�88 3�45 2�83 2�56
Metallurgy 0�00 0�00 3�33 2�04 2�19 1�85
Machinery and equipment 0�82 1�08 2�04 1�85 1�70 1�93
Petrochemical 3�54 8�56 7�39 5�00 4�91 4�66
Plastics industry and other manufacturing activities 0�00 0�63 3�29 1�98 1�49 1�90
Plastics 0�00 0�00 1�96 1�29 1�56 1�70
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
Fig. 14. Average number of workers per business, by manufacturing sector in the high-risk petrochemi-cal areas relative to Sicily: sector group 1
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
Fig. 15. Average number of workers per business, by manufacturing sector in the high-risk petrochemi-cal areas relative to Sicily: sector group 2
Source: Adapted from Istat census data (1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) collected and harmonized for changing classifications by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Messina�
As a general conclusion to this section on the effects of industrialization on employment, the most impor-tant point made is that the implementation of petrochemical plants within the three high-risk areas had important effects on the local economies. This implementation induced in the industrial sector a dramatic despecialization of labour in traditional activities and an increasing specialization in so-called heavy activities, particularly in the petrochemical growth period (1951–1981). Then, the following reduction (or relative stabilization) of the petrochemical industry has been matched by a renewal of specialization in traditional activities and a stabilization of metallurgy and mechanical and plastic industry specialization patterns.