The Italian Workers Occupying Against Climate Crisis

While this started out as a standard industrial dispute to save jobs, it has since transformed into a worker-led movement for a just transition. Workers pooled their expertise to research carbon-zero, non-extractive forms of production, and to implement a Lucas Plan-style alternative production model; instead of automotive car parts, they have already built prototype cargo bikes, which are being tested by various social movements in Italy, Germany and the Basque Country, with discussions taking place about how these bikes can be fed into networks of mutual aid drivers and those competing with the likes of Amazon.

With the GKN occupation, plant production is based on the needs of the community and in the most sustainable way, in stark contrast to the capitalist model, which is profit-driven and wasteful. Solidarity in the form of mass protests, benefit gigs, and financial donations from the workers’ movement in Florence has kept the workers afloat.