We had an issue with our workflow association in our publication site, the following error was logged 

Skipped associating the approval workflow with list 'Pages' because it appears that no SSP has been created. Workflow requires an SSP.

Resolution, it turned out that our Shared Service Provider was not created. After we've setting up our SSP, all new lists had the proper workflow associations.

Tags: sharepoint 2007, moss, workflow, association, ssp