A 19th-century slogan is getting a 21st-century makeover. The workers
of the world really are uniting. At least, some of them are.
The economic meltdown unleashed by the 2008 financial crisis hit
southern Europe especially hard, sending manufacturing output plunging
and unemployment soaring. Countless factories shut their gates. But some
workers at perhaps as many as 500 sites across the continent – a
majority in Spain, but also in France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey – have refused to accept the corporate kiss of death.
By negotiation, or sometimes by occupation, they have taken
production into their own hands, embracing a movement that has thrived
for several years in Argentina.
In France,
an average of 30 mostly small companies a year, from phone repair firms
to ice-cream makers, have become workers’ co-operatives since 2010.
Coceta, a co-operative umbrella group in Spain, reckons that in 2013
alone some 75 Spanish companies were taken over by their former
employees – roughly half the total in the whole of Europe.
A gathering in Marseille last year of representatives from
worker-controlled factories drew more than 200 delegates from more than a
dozen countries – including pioneers from Argentina, whose
turn-of-the-century economic crash sparked a wave of fabricas recuperadas
that today has left around 15,000 workers in charge at more than 300
workplaces. The fast-developing phenomenon is now a field of academic
study; there are websites, such as workerscontrol.net and autogestion.coop, dedicated to it.
No two self-managed ventures launch in the same circumstances, and
many face daunting obstacles: bureaucratic inertia and administrative
red tape that can delay or even prevent production; legal opposition
from former owners; a still-chilly economic climate; outdated machinery,
or products no longer in demand. Lifelong union militants can find
themselves, for the first time in their lives, making tough commercial
decisions.
Friday, May 1, 2015
May Day: workers of the world unite and take over – their factories
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Posted on: Friday, May 1, 2015
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