The politics of mechanical workshops

Show notesThe story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. The identifying details have been changed to protect privacy, but the situations and the political contexts are real. The real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODEThe car as a political object- André Gorz (1923 to 2007), the Austrian-born French philosopher and journalist who helped found the tradition of political ecology, set out an early and influential argument that the motor car was a political technology rather than a neutral one in his 1973 essay The Social Ideology of the Motorcar, published in the French magazine Le Sauvage.- Gorz’s wider work argued that an ecological transition is a political contest over who controls and benefits from change, a theme running through his book Ecology as Politics.Just transition- The concept of a just transition originated in the North American labour movement. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the trade unionist Tony Mazzocchi, a leader of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, proposed a fund to support and retrain workers displaced by environmental regulation, an idea first called a Superfund for Workers and later renamed just transition.- The principle holds that the costs of moving away from harmful industries should be shared across society rather than concentrated on affected workers and communities. The International Labour Organization adopted formal guidelines on just transition in 2015, and the preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement refers to a just transition of the workforce.Norway and the electric vehicle transition- In 2025, battery-electric vehicles made up 95.9 per cent of new passenger car sales in Norway, according to the Norwegian Road Federation, up from roughly a third a decade earlier. In 2017 Norway set a target of ending sales of new fossil-fuel cars by 2025.- The transition was driven by two decades of sustained government policy and tax incentives. Norway is also one of the world’s significant exporters of oil and gas, and manages its petroleum revenue through a large sovereign wealth fund.Cobalt, the Congo, and extractivism- Cobalt is a key component of most lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries. The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces well over two-thirds of the world’s cobalt, and between roughly 15 and 30 per cent of Congolese cobalt is produced through artisanal and small-scale mining, much of it in hazardous conditions, with documented child labour.- The Ecuadorian economist Alberto Acosta, a former president of Ecuador’s Constituent Assembly, has written extensively on extractivism, the economic model in which regions are organised around exporting raw materials. Acosta and others argue that an energy transition reliant on large-scale mineral extraction can reproduce the same pattern.The right to repair- For around two decades, independent repairers and consumer advocates internationally have campaigned for a right to repair, the principle that owners and independent trades should have access to the information, parts, and software needed to fix the products they own. The European Union introduced vehicle repair information access rules in 2007, and the US state of Massachusetts passed an automotive right-to-repair law in 2012.- In Australia, the Productivity Commission examined the question in its 2021 Right to Repair inquiry. The Motor Vehicle Service and Repair Information Sharing Scheme, legislated in 2021 and in effect from 1 July 2022, requires manufacturers to share service and repair information with independent repairers. Data transmitted wirelessly from newer connected vehicles to their manufacturers sits largely outside the scheme.REFERENCES[1] André Gorz, “The Social Ideology of the Motorcar,” Le Sauvage, September-October 1973; English translation by Patsy Vigderman in André Gorz, Ecology as Politics (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1980).[2] André Gorz, Ecology as Politics (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1980); first published in French as Écologie et politique (Paris: Galilée, 1975).[3] Les Leopold, The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007).[4] International Labour Organization, Guidelines for a Just Transition towards Environmentally Sustainable Economies and Societies for All (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2015).[5] United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Paris Agreement (2015), preamble; International Trade Union Confederation, Just Transition Centre materials, https://www.ituc-csi.org.[6] “Norway new car sales hit 96% electric in 2025 as Tesla dominates,” CNBC, 2 January 2026, reporting figures from the Norwegian Road Federation, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/02/evs-norway-new-car-sales-hit-96percent-electric-in-2025-as-tesla-dominates.html.[7] Norwegian Petroleum (official petroleum information service of the Norwegian government), https://www.norskpetroleum.no.[8] “DRC is the world’s largest producer of cobalt: how control by local elites can shape the global battery industry,” The Conversation, 19 September 2025, https://theconversation.com/drc-is-the-worlds-largest-producer-of-cobalt-how-control-by-local-elites-can-shape-the-global-battery-industry-236205; “Why Cobalt Mining in the DRC Needs Urgent Attention,” Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org/articles/why-cobalt-mining-drc-needs-urgent-attention.[9] Alberto Acosta, “Extractivism and Neoextractivism: Two Sides of the Same Curse,” in Beyond Development: Alternative Visions from Latin America, edited by Miriam Lang and Dunia Mokrani (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute; Quito: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 2013).[10] “Driving on Destruction: How EVs Are Exploiting Congo’s Mines,” UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, July 2025, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/news/2025/jul/blog-driving-destruction-how-evs-are-exploiting-congos-mines.[11] Australian Productivity Commission, Right to Repair: Inquiry Report (Canberra: Productivity Commission, 2021).[12] Motor Vehicle Service and Repair Information Sharing Scheme, Australian Government, in effect from 1 July 2022; Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association, materials on the scheme and on access to vehicle telematics data, https://www.aaaa.com.au.FURTHER READINGAndré Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology (1994). Gorz’s later argument on the politics of work, ecology, and the conditions for a transition that serves people rather than industries.Les Leopold, The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi (2007). A biography of the union leader who built the labour-environmental alliance and gave just transition its name.Miriam Lang and Dunia Mokrani, editors, Beyond Development: Alternative Visions from Latin America (2013). A Latin American collection on post-development and post-extractivism, including Alberto Acosta’s essay on extractivism.Thea Riofrancos, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (2020). A study of resource politics and post-extractivist movements, directly relevant to the minerals the energy transition depends on.Siddharth Kara, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives (2023). A reporting-based account of artisanal cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Aaron Perzanowski, The Right to Repair: Reclaiming the Things We Own (2022). The leading book-length treatment of the right to repair movement and its legal and political stakes.Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (2009). An argument for the worth of skilled manual and repair work, and a useful companion to the question of who gets to fix things.Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate (2014). A wide account of why the politics of transition, and not only the technology, decides who carries its costs.All works, organisations, scholars, legislation, and historical events listed above are real and citable. For any source intended for formal academic or professional writing, direct verification against the original publication or institutional record is recommended.About the hostLiv Roe is a civic and political adviser based in Melbourne. She works with businesses, organisations, and individuals on the political and civic context of their work. Book a consultation at livroe.org. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit civicsandcommerce.substack.com