Contents 

Introduction

1) Why the Tomas? Background 

2) Mapping Out the Tomas 

3) From Confrontation to Integration: The ‘Programa de Trabajo Autogestionado’ (Programme for Self-Managed Work) 

4) Towards the institutionalisation of radical forms of NGPA? 

Conclusion

References 

Notes

2) Mapping Out the Tomas 

Research carried out by the Department of Employment identified and mapped out 161 F/Es at the end of 2004 and 175 in 2005. The MTEySS classified them according to localisation, type of activity and branch of industry, legal form adopted, their assets and labour conditions (MTEySS, 2004). From the available data we can summarise the following: 

2.1 Geographical location

Most of the F/Es are located in areas where industry traditionally has been concentrated, the two key areas of which are the province of Buenos Aires (56 per cent) and the city of Buenos Aires (16 per cent).

2.2 Industry

Approximately half of the F/Es are concentrated in four main sectors: metallurgy (including machine building and electromechanical), food processing, meat packing and printing industries. 

2.3 Whether F/Es currently in productive activity.

Only 73 per cent are currently producing goods and services. Of these, most operate at only a fraction of the full capacity (in relation to the volumes produced before the crisis), primarily as a result of a lack of capital investment, poor labour utilisation and/or the weaknesses of management. In addition

there are difficulties in the marketing of the products and capacity to compete in national markets (MTEySS, 2004b). Efforts are directed at establishing new minimum conditions for production and decision-making, overhauling of the work-space, machinery and equipment, re-establishing services that have been cut off, as well as settling legal arrangements and negotiating with the government and creditors, clients and suppliers.

2.4 Legal form adopted

Most F/Es adopted the legal form of a co-operative (147 out of 161 identified by the MTEySS).

2.5 Ownership of and access to tomas assets

Access to premises, administrative resources and information, and the use of working equipment depended on negotiations between owners, magistrates and workers in each F/E (MTEySS 2004b).

2.6 Wages and working conditions

Many of the F/Es face appalling working conditions including: a variety of risks derived from the bad state of the buildings and equipment due to years of neglect, absence of investment or asset stripping. Workers’ incomes have varied according to the profits of and wage distribution within the enterprises. In many cases wages are below those established by the Collective Agreements in the respective branch of industry, although in some cases they parallel the norm. The majority of the occupied F/Es have adopted an egalitarian wage structure but with only a few exceptions, workers do not enjoy social insurance and security.

2.7 The historical distinctiveness of the tomas and debates

As argued in the introduction, the present tomas differ in some important respects from earlier examples of workers’ factory takeovers. They have been organised spontaneously by the workers employed at the factories or other enterprises, have usually involved non-unionised or un-represented workers, who had been organised by a group of shop-floor representatives set-up directly at the enterprise level (comisión interna), usually in opposition to or despite the official union structures. The rationale behind the tomas has been mainly about the preservation of jobs, with workers entrenching themselves in factories and physically occupying them, resisting ejection by the police, often in the face of imminent or actual closure. Thus, workers have had to develop co-operative relations, engender solidarity and seek autonomy as a result of practical needs, rather than a predefined ideological or political strategy

Two examples illustrate the above points. The first one is provided by the takeover of the Metallurgical and Plastic Industry of Argentina (IMPA) in 1997. Located in the neighbourhood of Almagro, city of Buenos Aires, IMPA was created in 1918 by German capital, nationalised in 1946 by the Peronist government and transformed into a workers’ co-operative in 1961. Initially a copper and aluminium smelter, it expanded after its nationalisation to manufacture a number of products, from airplane fuselages to bicycles, in three plants with a total of 3,000 workers. In 1961, attempts to privatise the company ended in the closing of two plants and the transformation of the Almagro plant into a co-operative. In 1997, the managers of the co-operative, without consulting workers, who were in this case partners, declared bankruptcy and closed its doors. Despite the fact that workers were neither unionised nor involved in the decision-making process of the factory, thebegan, on May 5 1998, a four-month struggle to maintain their jobs. During the struggle workers established close links with neighbours and social organisations who helped them in many ways to survive both the period of the factory takeover and the beginning of the reopening of the production system The 136 workers of the new company eliminated wage differences and introduced industrial democracy within the factory. They were not unionised (insofar as they were in opposition to the leadership of the Metallurgic Workers’ Union (Union Obrera Metalurgica, UOM), but had a good relationship with other unions. IMPA became part of a National Movement of Recovered Factories (Movimento National de Empresas Recuperadas, MER).5

Another example is provided by the garment factory Brukman Confecciones, occupied and recovered by its 54 workers, mostly women, on December 18, 2001. The factory was abandoned by its patron, leaving workers with overdue wages and pensions and appalling working conditions. This plant, located on Jujuy Avenue neighbourhood of Once, city of Buenos Aires, was the only one left after the Brukman brothers went bankrupt and closed the other two factories (electric home supplies and construction), leaving workers in the streets. In September 2000 the company was declared bankrupt too. It was literally abandoned. The patron did not attend any of the legal hearings demanded by the Ministry of Labour. The government designated an administrator. The factory was finally indebted by its owners by means of taking excessive credit, in this case, more than five million pesos. The debt amounted to more than 3.8 million pesos (1.8 million of it was fiscal debt to the Tax Office (Dirección General Impositiva, DGI), 243,000 dollars to Banco Nación and more than one million debt to the city council). Workers were paid in negro, that is with no pension contribution or any kind of social security (Brukman Workers 2003). Although workers were not unionised, decision to occupy the factory and stay over at the factory in order to defend their jobs was made in an spontaneous workers’ assembly.

The takeover was a challenge not only in terms of the reorganisation of production, creating a labour collective and resisting ejection. Initially, workers eliminated administrative posts and started rotating tasks among them. Brukman’s workers demanded that the Buenos Aires City Council expropriate the factory from its owners and allow workers to resume production under their control and self-management. This included the annulment of all previous debt (or its absorption by the state): ‘workers should not endure the burden produced by the ineptitude or inefficiency of the patronal’ (see project 0282D- 2002, MP Altamira, April 2002).

Workers sought for the factory to become the main provider of garments for the public sector, expanding the making of suits to a variety of textile products such as bedding for hospitals, children’s school uniforms, etc.). They also aimed to create jobs for the unemployed and those working under precarious conditions (Krakowiak 2002). They rejected the co-operative form, as it did not allow for expropriation exclusive of debt (Brukman Workers 2003). After a hard legal and physical struggle in October 2003, the City Council of Buenos Aires passed new legislation to expropriate the factory owners and enable workers occupying it to assume control. This was a collective political accomplishment which required Parliamentary intervention.6

 These examples show distinct political approaches and legal solutions that could empower workers. At least two approaches towards formal takeover and recovery are prominent: those which embrace the new co-operative movement and those which utilise the tomas as a tool for the development of workers autonomy within a broader political strategy of liberation. These discrepancies are reflected in several organisations that make up the F/Es. 7

With the exception of a small number, most of the occupied factories have resumed their production under the form of workers’ co-operatives, under the umbrella provided by the National Movement of Recovered Enterprises (Movimiento Nacional de Empresas Recuperadas, MNER)8, their slogan being ‘Occupy, Resist, Produce!’.9 Supported by some sectors of the Catholic Church (those concerned with eradicating poverty and unemployment), and the Argentine Workers Central (Central de Trabajadores Argentinos, CTA), the MNER offers legal support and political lobbying to deal with company debt, the establishment of co-operatives out of a bankrupt company, and strategies for resisting former owners’ use of the police and the law in attempts to evict workers from the factories. The co-operative strategy is accompanied by micro-ventures with other social movements such as the Movement of the Unemployed, directed at the creation an economy of solidarity, autonomous from the state. Co-operatives have been successful in the more labour intensive sectors of the economy and those industries where the quality of the product depends on the creativity and dedication of the workers and a highlevel of workers’ involvement in the company’s development (Krakowiak 2002). To those who belong to the Co-operative Movement, as it has become known, the recovering of factories is a strategy to maintain their jobs and thus avoid unemployment. As for the organisation of production and administrative and legal forms, the co-operative represents for them the best legal form allowing the independence from the state and the development of new autonomous and co-operative relations at the work place.

In an attempt to differentiate themselves from the ‘traditional co-operative movement’, which would have contravened solidarity principles by transforming the companies into public limited companies, advocates of this new co-operativism claim that recovered factories are ‘tools of resistance’ (Workers CTA Congress, n/d. unpublished document). They also reject the confusion which associates the co-operative movement with self-employment and subsistence production, the latter being survival strategies rather than tools for social change. According to this sector recovered factories allow thedevelopment of solidarity relations. The takeover is seen as a learning process based on co-operation, democracy and equal distribution of income, which has the potential to lead to the creation of new institutional and social relations.

In contrast to the co-operativist approach, a small group of factories have been recovered using a strategy enthusiastically advocated by most sectors of the political left10 – workers’ self-management with the demand for the nationalisation of the enterprise by the state.11 Factory takeovers are seen as part of a wider revolutionary strategy, a wider struggle for socialism, which believes in the demand of workers’ management with state intervention. Unlike co-operatives, direct workers’ management or workers’ control (of production and administration), following the nationalisation (estatización) of the factory in question, allows, according to this view, the implementation of a ‘non-reformist reform’.

To them, the major disadvantage of co-operatives is that they do not escape the logic of the capitalist system: the factory must compete in the market with the rest. This means that wages, the pace of production and working conditions are always at stake. The main problems are the lack of capital to buy raw materials and supplies to stimulate production, and the company indebtedness, compromising the production plans and leading to a reduction of salaries to levels well below the national average (self-exploitation) all to repay the debts.

They argue that the main difference between these two projects lies in that, whereas in the co-operative movement, the co-operative and workers’ selfmanagement are ends in themselves, in the proposal for self-management and workers’ control with demands for state ownership, this is a transitional measure which aims to accompany a wider process of liberation. Whereas in the former case workers’ ‘autonomy’ is limited to the whims of the market, in the latter workers’ control allows the experience of self-management but recognises that there is no possibility of real control unless the capitalist social relations of exploitation are altogether eliminated. Otherwise, these self-management experiments cannot be more than momentary illusions of hope and are destined to fail (Martinez J 2003).

3) From Confrontation to Integration: The ‘Programa de Trabajo Autogestionado’ (Programme for Self-Managed Work)

The Programme for Self-Managed Work (PTA) was launched by the Department of Employment in March 2004 (Decree 194) within the framework ‘Plan for the Promotion of Employment: More and Better Jobs’ (Plan Integral para la Promoción de Empleo: Más y Mejor Trabajo). The PTA is regarded by senior managers as an ‘institutional response to a diversity of demands by employees of enterprises and factories involved in the process of recovering of plants’ (MTEySS, Interview 1, 16.8.05). For programme managers, the PTA has the intention to

strengthen self-management by providing a range of services from advice to technical and financial assistance to concrete projects to be achieved in the short and medium term (MTEySS Interview 1, 16.8.05).

The Programme consists of five types of assistance.12

1. Financial help of 150 pesos (£30) to individuals for a maximum period of six months if they do not enjoy any other benefit. The idea here is to support workers who are resisting ejection and are in ‘stand by’ (MTEySS Interview 1), that is between being unemployed and employed.13

2-5. The allocation of 500 pesos per worker (maximum of 50,000 pesos) to the ‘productive unit’ for (i) technical assistance and training; (ii) the purchase of raw material, inputs, tools, equipment or repairing or put in motion old machinery (iii) technical assistance with installation of equipment and machinery and (iv) Support for the expansion of the F/Es and their consolidation in the market by providing funds to pay for the costs of the expansion such as legal certificates, permits and so on.

The creation of collective projects is encouraged by a recently created register (Registro de Efectores de Desarrollo Local y Economia Social),14 which allows workers involved in co-operatives or collective projects to be tax exempted for a two-year period to help low income workers in vulnerable situations (MTEySS, Interview 3, 2005).

3.1 Programme evaluation

Two assessments by the MTEySS (2004 and 2005) show some of the effects of the programme. Among other things, they illustrate that programme managers consider it to be successful. According to them, the PTA must act primarily as an institutional articulator, in order to solve specific situations that come up in each case. Progress was made in liaising with public and private bodies which would be able to provide technical or financial assistance to F/Es. The programme helped workers to reorganise production and the labour force and assisted them in the preparation of business plans, in repairing inadequate old machinery and in refurbishing buildings to meet legal requirements, and increase production levels and commercialisation of products, improve quality and reduce costs. It also assisted in purchasing new equipment so as to diversify production, reinvest in capital assets and improve safety at work and environmental conditions within the factory.

The agreements constitute the tool through which the MTEySS and the F/E in question engaged in a venture with the purpose of implementing the project proposed by workers, previously approved by the PTA. Tables A3.1, A3.2, A3.3 and A3.4. included in Appendix 3 describes the distribution of

agreements by region, sector, and the use to which the funds were put in 2004 and 2005. By October 2004, 28 agreements had been reached between the F/Es and the state for 29 F/Es (two enterprises sharing the same productive unit), 17 per cent of units identified. These agreements affected 24 per cent, that is 1,726 of workers (MTEySS, 2004b). The programme spent 615,460.96 pesos, i.e. 55 per cent of the amount assigned to 2004, and 39 per cent of the total programme budget of almost three million pesos (MTEySS, 2004b). More agreements were concluded during the following year. By the end of 2005, 38 per cent of the 175 F/Es (that is 67 units) reached an agreement with the state, incorporating 3,907 workers (that is 49 per cent of the estimated total of workers involved) (MTEySS, 2005a).

According to programme managers, the dissemination of the programme –via individual contacts or existing organisations – was key to the success of the programme. They attributed this partly to the fact mayors in the area in which the F/Es were located have received information about the programme. Dissemination activities also included the organisation of the ‘National Exhibition of Factories and Recovered Enterprises’ organised by the programme on April 29, 30 and May 1 2005 in the city of Buenos Aires, with the participation of 89 F/Es and more than 6,000 workers. The exhibition was sponsored by the city council and consisted of a series of conferences, business rounds, and stands where each co-operative could show their products, and speak about their experience. The idea was to ‘facilitate the dissemination of the F/Es activities, contribute to their commercial development and help them to make contacts with potential clients.’(MTEySS 2005c)

3.2 Distribution of agreements between F/Es and the State (2004 and 2005)

According to programme managers, the dissemination of the programme – done via individual contacts or through the existent organisations – was succesful as the majority of F/Es had received information about the programme. Dissemination activities included the organisation of the ‘National Exhibition of Factories and Recovered Enterprises’ organised by the programme on April 29, 30 and May 1 2005 in the city of Buenos Aires, with the participation of 89 F/Es and more than 6,000 workers. The exhibition was sponsored by the City Council and consisted of a series of conferences, business rounds, and stands where each co-operative could show their products, and speak about their experience. The idea was to ‘facilitate the dissemination of the F/Es activities, contribute to their commercial development and help them to make contacts with potential clients (MTEySS 2005c).

4) Towards the institutionalisation of radical forms of NGPA?

The PTA has fostered a degree of institutionalisation of workers’ radical action entailed in the tomas, no longer projecting them as unusual, reserved for times of crisis, but as embedded within the state agenda. Institutionalisation does not mean that state coercion and sources of conflict between workers and the state are eradicated. The instruments of coercion remain latent in the state’s monopoly on force, so ‘workers consent because they are always coerced’… (Hoffman, 1984: 85). Rather, institutionalisation means the ‘structuring’ of workers’ action by the state (Piven and Cloward 1977) and implies a controlling character which facilitates the transformation of coercion into consent, by finding areas of agreement between social and labour movements and the state on which to work new and stable channels of dialogue and participation. As Meyer and Tarrow (1998: 21) highlight

institutionalization is defined by the creation of a repeatable process that is essentially self-sustaining …; it is one in which all relevant actors can resort to well established and familiar routines. For political movements, institutionalization denotes the end of the sense of unlimited possibility…  ...it means the end of the uncertainty and instability that can result when unknown actors engage in uncontrollable forms of action.

The political and economic crisis made apparent the negative impact of neo-liberal  policies on democracy, fostering the mobilisation of traditional and new actors. Following similar developments in the rest of Latin America, the appointment of President Kirchner in May 2003 revealed the government’s intention to restablish a more sound relationship with civil society and to ‘repair’ the damage caused by neo-liberal  reforms. Unlike the preceding administration, whose general attitude towards social movements was hostile, the present government has publicly acknowledged that solving the problem of unemployment, poverty and the deterioration of labour market conditions requires a renewed dialogue with non-governmental organisations as a precondition of political stability and economic growth.

The tendency towards the institutionalisation of the tomas commenced within a wider political climate and policy framework, celebrated by many social movements whose priorities are (i) encouraging the ‘culture of work’ and solidarity within a context of unemployment, informality and crisis of union representation at the workplace; (ii) acting on the principles of collectivism and solidarity put forward by the workers and their supporters; and (iii) punishing speculative behaviour by investors at the expense of the workers.

First, the programme was launched in a context of high underemployment, unemployment and worsening labour conditions. Thus, in addition to ameliorating the effects of unemployment and creating jobs, PTA managers argue that the programme will help co-operatives to defend ‘dignified work’ and recover skills in trades being threatened with extinction (such as glass making)’ (MTEySS, Interview 1, 16.8.05). The programme matches the government’s intention to create a new policy ethos, central to which is the promotion of bottom-up decision-making processes and the encouragement of the principles of the ‘social economy’ (MDS, 2004; MDS, Interview 1, 5.9.05) embraced by the tomas: ‘we are thinking of policy from below… taking on board the social knowledge of the population’ (MDS, 2005: 15; see Dinerstein, 2006).

Second, although all forms of workers’ management are welcome, the majority of the ‘assisted companies’ became co-operatives. According to the MTEySS report, there are two possible reasons for this: (i) Co-operatives are ‘more compatible with the need to reach consensus and set common goals, as well as manage expectations and go ahead with the decision making process in difficult and unusual conditions’ (MTEySS, 2004). (ii) This legal form is encouraged by a new legislation on bankruptcy (Art. N° 190, Ley de Concursos y Quiebras no 24.522), which establishes that magistrates can allow workers to continue with the production of goods and services of the enterprise at stake until the legal declaration of bankruptcy, on condition that workers present a project and organisation plan under the form of workers’ cooperatives.

Third, expropriation, demanded by workers, has also been the government’s tool to help new co-operatives. Although some of the F/Es genuinely became bankrupt, many others staged fraudulent bankruptcies (quiebras) and drained factories of a variety of resources. Whereas in the former case bankruptcy is the culmination of a process of deterioration and indebtedness – a normal consequence of the crisis – in the latter it is the culmination of a process of emptying of the company by seemingly accumulating debt with fictitious creditors, non-declaration of assets and assetstripping, destruction of the inventory by bribing functionaries in charge of accounting control (Fajn, 2003: 34-35), all of which was achievable in the climate of impunity in which entrepreneurs operated during the 1990s. In the latter cases, the magistrates have ruled in favour of workers’ co-operatives expropriating the F/Es, their furniture, machinery and installations, by declaring the F/Es and their assets as ‘public goods.’ By the end of 2004, there were 52 factories expropriated from their owners.

 Conclusions

This paper has focussed on the institutional impact of radical forms of NGPA in Argentina, where NGPA is defined as ‘action with collective public purposes, such as self-help and community-based alternatives towards poverty alleviation, job creation and social transformation, undertaken by traditional and non-traditional actors, ranging from NGOs to unions and new social movements.’ The paper discussed the Programa de Trabajo Autogestionado, PTA, launched by the Department of Employment in 2004 with the intention of supporting technically and financially workers’ co-operatives which emerged out of the process of factory takeover and recovering in the late 1990s and early part of the first decade of 2000s.

The aim has been to show that PTA emerged neither as a result of policy innovation ‘from above’ or as a result of struggles ‘from below’. Rather it represents the crystallisation of the contested relationship between labour and social organisations and the state, specifically, between workers involved in factory takeovers and the government within the context of the aftermath of the crisis in Argentina. It was shown that, first, social and labour movements’ strategic orientations cannot be completely understood without considering governmental action. As Gough and Wood note,

the ways in which the state might seek to organise and reorganise its population for convenient, limited policy concessions can itself produce new solidarities and social bases for critical and social action (Gough and Wood, 2004: 322).

Second, the state is not a deus ex machina above society but the political form of capitalist social relations and, as such, the political arena where different interests are confronted and through which institutional and actor’ strategies are deployed and reshaped. Social actors’ acceptance, collaboration with, resistance to, alternative proposals to policy reforms (or several of these simultaneously), may produce changes in state institutions and policies themselves, as governments seek to achieve order, stability and a certain degree of consensus. From this perspective, although the state cannot resolve the contradictions inherent in capitalist societies, it can, nevertheless, ‘contain the political impact of those contradictions’ (Clarke, 1992: 136) through policymaking.

 The PTA reflects both a renewal in policy making and a change in the attitude of the movement of factory occupations, which have held a positive disposition towards institutional support to develop autonomy and selfmanagement. On the one hand, the government’s approach to social movements aims at depoliticising radical action by ‘assisting’ the workers and making their needs a priority in a way that absorbs their ethos of social policy from below.¹⁶ The PTA pre-empts the political meaning of the tomas and celebrates them as innovative survival strategies. On the other hand, the majority of the takeovers did not follow a political strategy led by unions or political parties. Their political edge stems from vulnerable employment situations and has been strategically oriented towards building collective projects and pursuing organisational goals aimed at the consolidation of the movement of recovered factories for practical reasons.

The PTA stimulates the process of institutionalisation of the tomas by providing financial and technical support to workers’ co-operatives within a broad policy framework which encouraged the return to the culture of work, promotes bottom-up decision-making processes, embraces the principles of ‘social economy’, and punishes anti-social corporate behaviour. As mentioned in the introduction, the tomas have had both a defensive character inspired by the need to preserve jobs and  an expansive political edge inspired by ideas of autonomy produced by the political crisis in Argentina in 2001. By ‘institutionalisation’ of the tomas we meant that the most challenging and radical aspects of workers’ actions are discouraged by the state. As the tomas are accepted and habitualised, they are depoliticised and restricted to the purpose of the recovering factories rather than making them an element of the ‘struggle for liberation’ anticipated by many workers. As Piven and Cloward (1977: 32 and 33) propose,

…concessions are rarely unencumbered. If they are given at all, they are usually part  and parcel of measures to reintegrate the movement into normal political channels and to absorb its leaders into stable institutional roles … At the same time that the government makes efforts to reintegrate disaffected groups, and to guide them into less politically disturbing forms of behaviours, it also moves to isolate them from supporters.

Paradoxically, the depoliticisation of the tomas by means of their institutionalisation through financial and technical support for the factories occurs simultaneously with the institutional recognition of the workers’ political stated objectives of autonomy and self-management.

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