La classe operaia va in paradiso (Elio Petri, 1971)

Lulu Massa is a highly productive worker at a factory paying piece work but is disliked by his colleagues as his efficiency is used by management to justify their demands for higher output. While employees are told to care for and rely on their machines, they see radical students outside the factory campaigning for higher pay rates and less work. Lulu lives with Lidia and her son. He puts his lack of interest in sex with her down to the pressures of the job.

Lulu loses a finger in a work accident, which the workers blame on the faster times. Shocked, he adopts the students' analysis and takes strike action to end piece work, against the unions' policy, which is for simply an increase in piece work rates.

Lulu pursues an affair with a female co-worker but finds that having sex with her in an automobile is difficult. Lidia, unhappy with his new far left sympathies, moves out with her son, who cries, but is told that Lulu never really cared for him, and reminded that Lulu would slap him occasionally.

When the employees go back to work, Lulu is fired for promoting the students' extremist views. Lidia and her boy return to the apartment, to find that Lulu has destroyed their inflatable Scrooge McDuck doll. Syndicalists arrive to inform Lulu that they have agreed a deal with the employers on work regulations and won Lulu's job back.