Self-Management in Argentina's Worker-Recovered Enterprises

Introduction

Since the late 1990s, approximately 185 small- and medium-sized companies in Argentina, which had declared or were nearing bankruptcy or were abandoned by their employers, have been self-managed by former employees. After many months of struggle, these "worker-recovered" firms typically organized themselves legally as workers' co-operatives. Worker-recovered enterprises (WREs) became particularly prominent in the two years following Argentina's financial collapse in late 2001, serving as a direct response to the failures of the country's exhausted neoliberal political-economic system. These enterprises are at the forefront of addressing Argentina's traditional institutions' inability to manage historically high levels of unemployment and poverty that have plagued the nation in recent years.

In this chapter, we will explore the phenomenon of WREs in Latin America, with a specific focus on Argentina. Based on our ongoing political, economic, and ethnographic research over the past five years with over 70 WREs from various economic sectors and regions, we will highlight two often-overlooked characteristics in studies of worker-recovered enterprises in Argentina.

First, most WREs emerge as direct responses to workers' deep concerns about becoming structurally unemployed (Olmedo and Murray 2002; Ruggeri 2006). The initial motivation for self-management, particularly in the "first era" of WREs between 1997 and 2003, was a defensive reaction against a collapsing and indifferent neoliberal system (Fajn 2003; Palomino 2003).

Second, the reorganization of most WREs under the legal structure of a workers' co-operative typically occurs only after workers have taken control of the plant. This shift does not stem from an inherent vision of becoming co-operativists or from presupposed political ambitions. Instead, it is a pragmatic and defensive strategy adopted to occupy their workplaces and maintain their employment.