industrial democracy – Green Social Thought https://www.greensocialthought.org Produce less. Distribute it fairly. Create a greener world for all. Thu, 22 Feb 2024 04:47:41 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.greensocialthought.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/cropped-ggef_logo_small-1-32x32.png industrial democracy – Green Social Thought https://www.greensocialthought.org 32 32 Utopia: Industrial Workers Taking the Wheel https://www.greensocialthought.org/biodiversity-biodevastation/utopia-industrial-workers-taking-wheel/ Sat, 18 Mar 2017 18:15:12 +0000 https://gst.riz-om.network/reprint/utopia-industrial-workers-taking-wheel/ by Hilary Wainwright

Back in the 1970s, with unemployment rising and British industry contracting, workers at the arms company Lucas Aerospace came up with a pioneering plan to retain jobs by proposing alternative, socially-useful applications of the company’s technology and their own skills. The ‘Lucas Plan’ remains one of the most radical and forward thinking attempts ever made by workers to take the steering wheel and directly drive the direction of change. Forty years later, we are facing a convergence of crises: militarism and nuclear weapons, climate chaos and the destruction of jobs by new technologies and automation. These crises mean we have to start thinking about technology as political, as the Lucas […]]]> by Hilary Wainwright

Back in the 1970s, with unemployment rising and British industry contracting, workers at the arms company Lucas Aerospace came up with a pioneering plan to retain jobs by proposing alternative, socially-useful applications of the company’s technology and their own skills. The ‘Lucas Plan’ remains one of the most radical and forward thinking attempts ever made by workers to take the steering wheel and directly drive the direction of change.

Forty years later, we are facing a convergence of crises: militarism and nuclear weapons, climate chaos and the destruction of jobs by new technologies and automation. These crises mean we have to start thinking about technology as political, as the Lucas Aerospace workers did, and reopen the debate about industrial conversion and economic democracy.

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