The Lucas Plan

Workers for a Just Transition
Unionised workers at an aerospace and arms factory threatened with redundancies develop their own plan for the future of the Lucas company—one that pivots away from arms production and towards sustainable energy generation technologies

Context

There is much written about the role of corporations and businesses in the drive towards low-carbon processes and materials, including the implementation of circular economies in product and service supply chains.1Elisabeth Eppinger and others, ‘Sustainability Transitions in Manufacturing: The Role of Intellectual Property’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 49 (2021), 118–26 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2021.03.018> However, there are few examples of workers spearheading such changes from within the workplace. Initiated in 1972, the Lucas Plan was a forerunner of sustainable transition plans. Lucas Aerospace was primarily a military supplier, building parts for weapons, funded by the UK government. When workers at the Lucas Aerospace factories in the UK were facing mass redundancies as a combined result of government policy and increased competition in the aerospace industry, they took action and developed a plan to save their jobs and repurpose the factory for social good.

Practice

In response to the threat of losing their livelihoods, the unionised workers at Lucas Aerospace formed a group representing the seventeen Lucas Aerospace factories, named the Combine.2‘Lucas Plan’, MayDayRooms <https://maydayrooms.org/archive_item/lucasplan/>. Initially the workers requested that the government include them in widely publicised nationalisation plans in order to save their jobs. When the government rejected this proposal, the Combine was instead encouraged to come up with an alternative corporate strategy for the company.3Brian Salisbury, ‘Story of the Lucas Plan’ The Lucas Plan <https://lucasplan.org.uk/>.

The workers requested suggestions from academics at universities and other outside organisations for products that they could make that would respond to social needs. Faced with very few replies, they asked for product suggestions within the workforce itself. The workers made many suggestions: as well as medical equipment, the products that were put forward included sustainable energy technologies such as heat pumps, solar cell technology, and wind turbines. Many of these technologies were not in widespread use at the time, and some were still under development. The managers of Lucas Aerospace rejected the proposals, but the plan received interest from around the world, being nominated for the Nobel peace prize in 1979.4Rob Walker, ‘Eco-pioneers in the 1970s: how aerospace workers tried to save their jobs – and the planet’, The Guardian, 14 October 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/oct/14/lucas-aerospace-1970s-plan-documentary-eco-pioneers>. The initial aim of saving their jobs had moved forward to encompass a sustainable and ethical shift in the entire purpose of the company.

Projects such as the Lucas Plan, despite not being taken up by the managers of the company, are important in conceiving and demonstrating possibilities. The Lucas Plan was an example of grassroots crowdsourced collaborative knowledge that had a diverse and lasting impact. It inspired the Greater London Council to set up ‘technology networks’ to encourage participatory technology design. It demonstrated the potential for alliances between unions and environmental movements.5David King and Breaking the Frame, ‘The Lucas Plan: how Greens and trade unionists can unite in common cause’, The Ecologist, 2 November 2016 <https://theecologist.org/2016/nov/02/lucas-plan-how-greens-and-trade-unionists-can-unite-common-cause>. In 2016, the Lucas Plan held a conference to celebrate 40 years since the plan was conceived. The conference connected the Lucas Plan with initiatives such as ‘Just Transition’.6‘40th Anniversary’, The Lucas Plan <https://lucasplan.org.uk/40th-anniversary-conference/>. Just Transition, the concept itself emerging from trade unions in the US, aims to ensure that workers and their communities are ‘at the heart of a transition based on social needs’, and that transition is a ‘transformative process for economic and social justice.’7Sam Mason, ‘Just Transition: Read the arguments and join the debate,’ The Lucas Plan<https://lucasplan.org.uk/2016/08/17/just-transition-read-the-arguments-and-join-the-debate/>.

A transition to low-carbon and zero carbon in the manufacturing sector will have spatial ramifications on the distribution of industry and therefore also employment.8Aidan While and Will Eadson, ‘Zero Carbon as Economic Restructuring: Spatial Divisions of Labour and Just Transition’, New Political Economy, 27.3 (2022), 385–402 <https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2021.1967909> The rejection of the initial Plan by management is symptomatic of the conflict between the demands of profit- and growth-led economics and proposals that take into account planetary boundaries. Despite occurring more than 40 years ago, the Lucas Plan demonstrated that with agency, workers across all sectors (including architecture) can propose solutions that ensure both sustainable long-term employment and sustainable transitions away from environmentally and socially damaging industries. How this translates into the present day requires careful consideration of the connections between economic, spatial, and climate inequalities.9Dan Olner and others, ‘The Spatial Economics of Energy Justice: Modelling the Trade Impacts of Increased Transport Costs in a Low Carbon Transition and the Implications for UK Regional Inequality’, Energy Policy, 140 (2020), 111378 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111378>

Notes