Written by George Hibberd – former airline pilot
How can we bring together the climate and workers’ movements?
This was the question posed to the 300 odd workers, trade unionists, locals and climate activists from around the world gathered outside a GKN factory on the outskirts of Florence, Italy.
The journey to this question being posed started with a very early morning outside East Croydon station where Todd Smith and myself of Safe Landing met with two others from the trade union movement. We all bundled into Todd’s Tesla and started the drive down to Dover where we boarded the 09:05 ferry across to Calais.
There started the two day drive down to Florence. After an overnight stay in Strasbourg, a beautiful drive through the Swiss alps and a quick swim in Lago di Laguna on the southern edge of the Alps we arrived in Florence just after midnight.
Why was it that trade unionists and activists from all over the world were converging on Florence?
The GKN factory in Florence used to make car parts but with the downturn of the fossil fuel automotive industry their factory was facing closure and mass redundancies. The workers weren’t willing to allow these mass redundancies when the factory could instead diversify their products. So, the workers joined together with local climate activists to set about forming what’s called in Italy a “permanent assembly” called #Insorgiamo – Con I Lavoratori (We rise up – with the workers). .
The workers effectively have occupied their own factory and are collectively organising so that the factory can stay open and locals can keep their jobs. They have created a comprehensive business plan to produce cargo bikes and solar panels. The idea is to create products that both benefit the local community and the push for decarbonisation. As part of this they have created a shareholder scheme offering out shares of the business, which as a result has raised over $1,000,000.
Prototype cargo bikes produced by the GKN Workers’They are hoping to take this money to the local government and ask for a public intervention where the government would use public money to buy the remaining value of the factory, approximately $20,000,000. Sadly, the local government is showing no signs of wanting to do this, putting the workers in a very difficult position.
The workers’ campaign has been an inspirational show of how workers and the climate movement can unite to enact a transformation of business away from fossil fuels and into climate and community-friendly business. The workers have teamed up with the Fridays For Future (FFF) movement in Florence hosting a number of marches and protests in the city putting pressure on the local government. Workers have even gone on hunger strike and the movement has put on a huge banquet for the local community in the city centre.
To hear more about this story, watch this video and this video on their YouTube channel.
So where does Safe Landing come in?
The GKN workers called for a national assembly of shareholders over the weekend of 11-13th October 2024. On Friday 11th we attended a joint workers and FFF protest in the centre of Florence. There we met other trade unionists from the UK delegation – unionists from The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), Unite, Fire Brigades Union, Unison, MeTU, RMT, Greener Jobs Alliance, Friends of the Earth Scotland.
Shareholders’ Assembly
The next day we congregated outside the GKN factory with all the shareholders. Workers from GKN hosted an open discussion addressing the question of “how do we bring together the workers and climate movements?”.
I spoke about our work around Workers’ Assemblies, particularly with the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA – the airline pilot union). I also addressed how the climate crisis is less a crisis of emissions and more a crisis of power – who holds power, who does not hold power and who makes decisions in our industry. Watch my full speech here.
After a community lunch put on by the workers we listened to a panel of speakers also addressing the earlier question. We heard from the RMT who spoke about workers’ power being used in the UK to put pressure on the government.
We heard from a movement called Wir Fahren Zusammen (We Drive Together), which is a collaboration between the Fridays for Future movement and Verdi union in Germany. They have been doing amazing work bringing bus workers and climate activists together to augment their collective power. Read more about their campaign here.
Finally we heard from a similar campaign in the Basque Country. After the panel there was time to socialise and make connections over drinks from the workers’ bar.
The #Insorgiamo business plan
The next day shareholders gathered to hear the GKN workers present their business plan for the factory moving forward. We heard the predicament the local government is putting the workers in if they do not use public money to intervene and help with the transition of the factory. At the end a motion was passed calling for the following directives if the factory starts producing the solar panels and cargo bikes:
(Translated from Italian)
- Support for mutual aid funds in aid of social disputes, trade unions, social spaces in difficulty.
- Installation of photovoltaic systems, including stand-alone, in cases of shantytowns present in our country especially in areas with a high presence of illegal hiring, such as Rosarno or the Agro PonƟno, in connection with all the campaigns for food self-determination and for the protection of the exploitation chain.
- Social sharing projects of cargo bikes in neighbourhoods, suburbs, industrial areas, agricultural areas where mobility is denied to large sections of the impoverished population.
- Support for alternative media networks that promote full awareness of the need for climate and social justice.
- Support for popular sports, such as popular gyms, as a promotion of a different model of sports.
Read the full untranslated motion here.
Upon the passing of the motion the shareholders burst into a song written by the movement for this struggle. It was a profound moment of unity and power. After the assembly the shareholders and workers made their way to another local factory where textile workers in the labour union Sudd Cobas were striking, calling for a maximum of 5-day working weeks and 8-hour working days. We marched through the industrial estate in Prato, just outside Florence.
A day off in Pisa
On Monday 28th October myself, Todd and our two companions took a day off exploring Pisa. After a focaccia sandwich, we did the obligatory trip to the leaning tower of Pisa. In the afternoon we headed to the beach and foraged for some mushrooms in the Parco Regionale Migliarino. Early on Tuesday morning we start the two-day drive back up North to Calais, stopping overnight again in Strasbourg.
Worryingly, the temperature when we left Italy was 22 degrees. When we arrived in Calais, the temperature there was a whopping 26 degrees – in mid-October – a stark reminder of how fast this crisis is running away from us.
Key takeaways from the weekend:
- Travelling by car/train is much longer than taking the plane, but you feel much more grounded to the true length of your journey. We got a much better perspective of how the landscape, the ecosystems, the cultures and people changed throughout the journey. When you disembark a plane and you’re hit with an entirely different temperature, smell and timezone, it can be quite disorientating and unnatural. Slower travel massively reduces this disorientation and gives you a greater appreciation of what a journey of that distance involves and how far you have truly travelled.
- Italy has a strong culture of community and much more access to free public spaces for assembling and socialising. This is something the UK is lacking but can be revived.
- Uniting the climate and workers’ movement is happening in countries around Europe and is crucial to fighting the climate crisis and the capitalist forces destroying workplaces, industries, ecosystems and climate.
- Assemblies of workers are critical to inverting the power structures of industries giving power back to workers and grassroot campaigners.
- Unions’ democratic structures and decision-making processes have done lots of good work but are potentially not capable of addressing a crisis as big as the climate crisis and just transitions in the time available to us. Workers’ Assemblies and deliberative democracy can address this.
- We must learn from campaigns like Wir Fahren Zusammen and the GKN workers to bring together workers’ and climate movements.
Myself and Todd came away from the trip feeling extremely hopeful, empowered and full of ideas to bring into our work in Safe Landing and trade unions. The work of the GKN workers and Wir Fahren Zusammen is incredibly inspiring. Our main learning from this trip was that when workers and grassroot climate campaigns come together, we are unstoppable.