Anii 1960 pt Valonia falimente si concedieri 1960 brought a higher standard of living for many workers on thr assembly-line

ne factories, but in the basic industries many workers suffered from job insecurity and temporary unemployment. Esspecialy in Wallonia, the decline of the steel and coal industry proveked structural unemployment. During the period 1950-1959 bankruptcies of industrial firms had caused 26.930 dismissals. the decline of heavy industry in wallonia was considerared an acute political problem, because here the radical rank-and-file of the Walloon trade union movement was now organized outside of the Socialist Party in the MPW. it was widely admitted that the decline of walloon industry was due to the defensive investment policy of the big holding companies, industrial workers in Wallonia felt themselves threatned by an evergrowing Flamish majority imposing its own will on the Walloon minority. multinational entreprises preferred Flanders to Wallonia when locating their new factories was interpreted as conspiracy by the Flemish politicians against the Walloon working clases(tab) in fact, multinationals companies were not interested in investing in the regressive steel and coal industries of Wallonia. to avoid general social crisis, economic reconversion of Wallonia became an urgent problem. But initiatives in that direction failed because they were curing the symptoms.For instance, when in 1967 the SA Ateliers Germain-Anglo in La Croyere went bankrupt, the Vanden Boeynant government implemented a large -scale investment programme aimed at the modernization of the rolling stock of the State railway company SNCB-NMBS and by doing so permitted the survival of the remaining rolling-stock plants in Wallonia.