Last month at its annual Congress, the TUC debated four separate motions on the climate crisis. Of the efforts put to delegates by unions, all called for a ‘just transition’ to ensure that workers in the energy, transport and manufacturing industries are not simply thrown on the dole by the prospect of a decarbonised economy. Appeals to the newly elected Labour government were plentiful.

But absent from every motion was the need for industrial militancy to stop the climate catastrophe and ensure that a just transition does not result in working-class communities being shattered by long-term unemployment. Some in our movement consider this notion pie in the sky. But workers have always taken the lead in defending the environment in the past — and it is essential that they do so again.

In the 1960s and 1970s, mass meetings of Australian construction workers in the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) led to the inspirational ‘green bans’, where workers refused to destroy the environment around them in the pursuit of profit. This stand taken by workers was a seminal moment in labour organising and environmental campaigning, with many areas the union saved now having been granted UNESCO World Heritage status. Just transition advocates also invoke the Lucas Plan, where shop stewards at engineering plants engaged their skilled colleagues in drawing up workplans for socially useful production.

But these struggles, inspiring as they are, took place decades ago, and we are in desperate need of current inspiration. One forceful example that seems to have been missed by most union members — but was mentioned by firefighters’ delegate Jamie Newell at TUC this year — was the GKN automotive engineering plant in Florence, Italy. Faced with mass redundancies and the closure of their factory, workers who manufacture components for BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, and Lamborghini took control of their plant in July 2021.

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.

The production of solar panels is also being discussed as part of the GKN alternative plan, but this is reliant on investment — though, incredibly, nearly €1 million has been raised from across Italy to invest in the plant through their popular shareholder scheme. Should they continue to raise more and maintain serious public momentum, the prospects could include the regional government buying the factory out from previous owners and handing it to workers to run as a cooperative; this would compel the Italian government to provide additional investment, with the factory still operating under workers’ control.

Additionally, it also means that trade unions, climate action groups, mutual aid organisations and other social justice organisations can get engaged with it. The potential to link up with thousands of workers and communities internationally — and show the possibility of a good example — could provide fertile ground for other workers to replicate efforts at GKN by taking control of their production, communities and lives.

The GKN occupation has also challenged the political mood in a country governed by the far-right. The occupied GKN factory is now acting as a focal point to support refugees and provide solidarity with anti-fascist campaigns. The political links here have not fallen out of the sky, but have been developing over numerous years through the existence of Insorgiamo Soms, a rank-and-file workers’ collective active in the factory. As they recently posted on their website, ‘this resistance has become a project … it has given birth to a reindustrialisation plan from below, with the aim of giving back to the territory the jobs that were destroyed, creating a socially integrated factory at the service of the community that defended it, restarting with an ecologically advanced production.’

This insistence on worker’s direct action is key to the Florence dispute, with workers organising horizontally — every worker has a say, and no one is above anyone else. There is no full-time trade union official telling workers what the negotiations agenda should be or whether they can take action or not. When we look at the levels of inequality rife in society, it is refreshing to find an example of pulling together without corrupted hierarchical power structures which so often hold workers back.

Yet despite the GKN occupation becoming a militant social movement with mass community support in Florence, and being the talk of the Italian union movement, few people in the British labour movement know anything about it. That is why a GKN occupation British solidarity network has been established, involving union members from rail, education, construction and delivery unions. Our aim is to raise the profile of the GKN occupation. More than 20 activists have already agreed to join a rank-and-file union delegation to Florence for the GKN mass assembly on 13 October.

Additionally, union branches and community activists can support the occupation in many ways: by e-mailing them a message of support, by sharing Reel News videos about the occupation, by buying shares in the popular shareholder scheme, and by electing a delegate or sending a solidarity donation to send low-paid workers to attend the mass assembly in October.

At a time when our movement is considering how it can build alternatives to climate catastrophe and begin to tip the scales of power ever more in our favour, we need examples such as the GKO occupation popularised across the unions and across society as a whole. Fundamentally, this should be done so that the workers can continue their good work, but also because we want to see our own GKOs emerging across Britain. Be part of this historical struggle — and help bring the spirit of Florence back to these shores.