Argentina's worker-occupied factories and enterprises

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Acknowledgments

Peter Ranis thanks go to Héctor Palomino and Silvia Garro, whose contacts with the Argentine cooperative movements were instrumental in my research. Unless otherwise noted, all currency figures in this article are in US dollars.

Notes

1. Between 1992 and 2001, the public debt of Argentina increased by almost $50 billion. At the same time, Argentine indirect taxes on consumption, mainly IVAs, a value-added sales tax, made up 72.5% of revenues collected, whereas taxes on profits and income comprised only 27.5% (Resels 2002: 86).

2. In 1993, in the early stages of Menem's neoliberal economic policies, of the 500 largest companies, 280 were in the hands of national capital groups and 220 were foreign-owned. By 2000, 314 were foreign-owned and 186 were Argentine nationals. In terms of earnings, the changes were even more pronounced. In 1993, the national firms accumulated close to $12 billion and the foreign firms $19 billion. By 2000 the national firms attained less than $8 billion and the foreign firms $37 billion. But most dramatic were the comparative data on profits. The national firms' profits declined from over $2 billion in 1993 to only $365 million in 2000, while the foreign firms' profits rose from over $4 billion in 1993 to over $7 billion in 2000. In other words, by 2000, although the foreign firms made up 63% of the largest firms they attained 95% of the profits (Página 12, May 21, 2002).

3. A powerful testimonial to this changed environment is that on a single day in Argentina – November 21, 2003 – there were four simultaneous demonstrations in Buenos Aires: one group supported workers in a Western province that had destroyed the offices of two private foreign-owned petroleum companies for their downsizing policies; a second group of piqueteros were demanding increasing governmental subsidies for the unemployed; a third demonstration protested against Argentine entry into the US-sponsored Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), and a further group of judicial employees were picketing for higher wages (La Nacion Line, November 22, 2003).

4. Table 1 points out dramatically the degree to which Argentine workers have lost their jobs in the last decades, particularly in the 1990s, and how super-exploited are those who remain on the job as measured by their productivity increases over the years.

5. Subsequently, the bankruptcy court judge reopened a "cramdown" phase (a type of hostile takeover) in which a "rescuing" buyer could make a bid to buy a factory. The eventual bid by the wife of the former owner was disallowed by a Buenos Aires appellate court in August 2005. This now opens the way for bankruptcy proceedings and the establishment of a Zanon factory cooperative, known as Fasinpat (Fãbrica sin Patrones - Factory without Bosses) (Clarín.com, August 14, 2005). The Zanon workers' stance is that the cooperative mode is a transitional position meant to protect their interests in maintaining the factory's continuity. Their long-term commitment still remains that of state ownership under worker control.

6. In an exhaustive national sample survey of 72 recuperated factories and enterprises conducted in 2004, two-thirds achieved productive capacities between 20% and 80%. See Ruggeri et al. (2004: 47).