SELF-MANAGEMENT IN RECUPERATED FACTORIES IN ARGENTINA

By Ercilia Sahores, Executive Director, Center for Global Justice

Most of us have heard the word “autogestión” used within different contexts recently.  . In Spanish, it means to manage work cooperatively by the workers, or, in other words, to “self-constitute” social and productive lives while minimizing the intrusive mediation of traditional bureaucracies, hierarchical organization, or the state.

In Argentina, especially since the socio-economic crisis of 2001 and 2002, countless grassroots groups—the piqueteros, worker-recovered factories, micro enterprises, human rights groups, environmental and rural groups—have been experimenting with and concretely practicing forms of self-management that challenge the neoliberal patterns of life and, at the same time, move beyond them.

This presentation sponsored by the Center for Global Justice will focus on  the recovered enterprises in Argentina. They are one of the many consequences of the deindustrialization that destroyed the productive structure of Argentina beginning in the early years of the 1990s. Many recovered factories are run co-operatively and all workers receive the same wage. Important management decisions are taken democratically by an assembly of all workers, rather than by professional managers

To understand the impact of the movement, University of Buenos Aires Professor and social anthropologist Andrés Ruggeri will give a talk on "Self-management in recuperated factories in Argentina”

These are stories of workers fighting, not giving up or hesitating to fight back when they saw how their working places disappeared. They were not fatalistic or resigned to some fate or lose their dignity, but they joined forces and are building a large, powerful movement with popular support.  They decided to fight for their  rights and confront the forces mounted against them.

It is a story of passion and courage, with many consequences.