We Want Control And We Won’t Make Weapons
March 6, 2020 9:03 AM   Subscribe

“ The response of the SSCC to the proposed job losses was to go far beyond the norms of militant trades unionism as, in 1976, it put forward an alternative Corporate Plan for production across the company. The Plan, which had been drawn up by workers on the shop floor, contended that Lucas should shift from a concentration on military hardware towards the production of socially-useful goods. It was two years in the making and drew on the technical expertise and detailed knowledge of the production process of the workforce. Altogether it contained over 150 ideas with detailed plans filling more than a thousand pages.” Lucas Aerospace- When Workers Planned Production
posted by The Whelk (3 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
Interesting, thanks for posting! Seems like the "important lessons" the authors refer to are not entirely of a positive nature:
Long months of negotiations over the Plan, meetings with ministers and union officials to win concrete backing for it, gradually sapped the militancy of the Lucas workers. SSCC leaders became increasingly detached from the workforce and workplace organisation began to wither.

With the Plan effectively kicked into the long grass, and the influence of the SSCC on the shop-floor in decline, management determined to break its influence. They pushed forward with the job cuts and activists, including many of the most prominent members of the SSCC and those most associated with the alternative plan, were victimised and dismissed.
posted by Not A Thing at 9:55 AM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]


Shades of the Rolls Royce workers depicted in Nae Pasaran, who refused to work on Pinochet's jets.

I bet the victimization was something like The Consulting Association — perhaps the most overtly covert anti-labour initiative in the UK — quietly keeping an illegal list of people who would never work in the construction industry again.
posted by scruss at 12:35 PM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


Ah, you beat me to it, I was going to pull together a post about this too.

Last weekend there were screenings across the UK of The Plan, a long but really good documentary looking back at the plan and the surrounding political landscape, with extensive interviews with many of the leading people involved. You can stream / download it to watch.

We'd be in a much better position today if it had succeeded, given they were proposing switching from defence work into wind turbines, heat pumps, electric vehicles, and more.

There was also a 1978 documentary made about it for the Open University.

There were some successes outside of the attempt to switch Lucas' product lines - in the early 80s it led to "the creation of Technology Networks. These community-based workshops shared machine tools, access to technical advice, and prototyping services, and were open for anyone to develop socially useful products." FabLabs/Makerspaces decades before they swept the world.
posted by amcewen at 2:43 PM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]


« Older Future of Transportation   |   “Good morning, and welcome to the Black Mesa... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments