Researchers explored the relationships between the great working class communities and the industries they sustained and were sustained by in terms of production, storage, and transmission of skills. First, the ethnographic literature on industrial workplaces and the working class communities associated with them was reviewed. Next, lengthy interviews were conducted with eight steelworkers who had been employed at Stelco in Ontario, Canada, since at least the 1970s. The first part of the study focused on nonformal skills transmission in the community, and the second focused on nonformal mechanical/manual skills in the plant and how they are learned and transmitted among workers. Particular attention was paid to the nonformal skills that have traditionally been sustained by workers among themselves and that are now at risk of disappearing because of the combination of (1)the downsizing that dismantles great working class communities; (2) the technological and managerial restructuring of the steel industry; and (3) the increasing substitution of formalized and institutionally controlled forms of training for the nonformal modes of training among working class men. The study also revealed that the processes of experiential learning that are still occurring at the plant are not well defined and do not appear to be valued by the company. (Contains 39 references.) (MN)