Recently, this industry property issue came up on my end as well.
It would be very convenient if the Company industry property could be assigned, by default, to the Contacts belonging to that company. If necessary, this default Contact industry property could then be overwritten by the record owner for additional detail/segmentation info.
Enabling this feature should not require workflow. It should take no more than some simple relational database programming. Link the Customer Industry field to its parent Company Industry field, with the ability to overwrite it.
The suggested bulk edit solution is far too complicated and labor-intensive.
I had the same question but I am a paid user. How do I use a workflow to automatically connect the company industry to the contact record for that company?