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This article examines the relationship between German trade unions and works councils, adopting a framework that identifies three main influences on the works council; the locus of bargaining, economic conditions and the strength of workplace unionism. The findings of an attitudinal survey of works council chairpersons in the metalworking industry, which examines both the influence of trade unions and the impact of unification on workplace industrial relations, are then reported. The results suggest that union density and union workplace organisation does strengthen the loyalty of works councillors to their union and that east German works councillors in metalworking may have more co‐operative relationships with management. Comparisons with the clothing industry, however, show larger sectoral differences, with metalworking works councils much less co‐operative in both the old and new Länder, reflecting the vanguard role of IG Metall and the importance of workplace mobilisation to the union.

DRAWING of metals occurs in innumerable ways, both hot and cold. Here, however, we are concerned only with the cold drawing operations used to form vast tonnages of steel, and large quantities of non‐ferrous metals, as tube and wire, and for the forming of sheet metals (especially by deep drawing).

The West European metalworking lubricants market has seen a number of major changes in the past decade.

In the late 19th century, work attributed to a Mr F. W. Taylor showed that water flooding a cutting area permitted a great increase in cutting speeds. Prior to this cutting was performed dry, at very slow speeds, but it was found that water gave an easier removal of swarf, enabling the cutting speed to be increased by some 40 to 50%. Water, obviously, gave rise to the problems of corrosion.

This paper gives a review of the finite element techniques (FE) applied in the area of material processing. The latest trends in metal forming, non‐metal forming and powder metallurgy are briefly discussed. The range of applications of finite elements on the subjects is extremely wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore the aim of the paper is to give FE users only an encyclopaedic view of the different possibilities that exist today in the various fields mentioned above. An appendix included at the end of the paper presents a bibliography on finite element applications in material processing for the last five years, and more than 1100 references are listed.