Transformations in the French metalworking industries have given rise to numerous studies on employment and job content in metallurgy over the past decade. One study related technical transformations to changes in the skills content of certain categories of workers. Although automation results in the elimination of certain know-how belonging to an earlier phase of technical development, the analysis of robotization is no longer reduced to a simple robot-operator substitution, since the robot can never be a perfect substitute for the human operator. A series of studies in 1980-84 attempted to consider the role of the firms' economic situation in technological and organizational decision making. Numerical control appears to accentuate the polarization between preparation and manufacture and leaves open the possibility of assigning activities to different categories of workers. A series of studies in 1986-87 resulted in an "upgrading" of the role of the shop, the place where production requirements are brought together. Although there are examples of the Japanese "kanban" type in the French automobile industry, manufacturers seem to prefer investing in state-of-the-art technology, such as industrial automation or computerization. A comparison of French and Japanese experience in the machine tool sector shows a Japanese flexibility due to the different nature of occupational categories in France and Japan. (22 references) (YLB)