The Worker-Recovered Enterprises in Argentina: The Political and Socioeconomic Challenges of Self-Management
A paper written by Andrés Ruggeri, professor at the University of Buenos Aires's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and translated by me. The paper will be presented by Andrés next week at The Centre for Global Justice's annual conference, this year entitled Another World is Necessary. The conference will take place between July 19-29, 2006 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Here is the paper's abstract:
Abstract
The worker-recovered enterprises (empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores, or ERT), defined as productive business unities abandoned or emptied by their owners and put into operation once again by their workers under self-management, are a relatively new phenomenon in Argentina and, on the whole, in Latin America. As such, they have attracted much world attention, especially after the Argentine crisis of December 2001. Nevertheless, the ERTs represent much more than a series of labour conflicts that culminate with the taking of factories and enterprises by workers. It is important to understand this process within the context of the almost total destruction of the nation’s productive apparatus and the sentencing of millions of workers to unemployment and structural marginality. Putting ERTs back into production signifies much for the almost 10,000 ERT workers that have engaged in these important and novel struggles, both from an economic as well as from a political and cultural point of view. In support of these workers, a research project out of the University of Buenos Aires has been developed to explore the historical, social, and economic contexts of the issues leading to the ERT movement and their particular characteristics and challenges. This research includes not only quantitative and qualitative data (detailed in the book The Recovered Enterprises in Argentina (Buenos Aires: Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Buenos Aires, 20051) but also a conceptual analysis pivoting on the concept of social innovation rooted in self-management. Fundamentally, we have come to understand this social innovation to include the strategies and methods destined to generate forms of productive unities outside of the paths dictated by the capitalist form of economic organization.
Read rest of paper.
Abstract
The worker-recovered enterprises (empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores, or ERT), defined as productive business unities abandoned or emptied by their owners and put into operation once again by their workers under self-management, are a relatively new phenomenon in Argentina and, on the whole, in Latin America. As such, they have attracted much world attention, especially after the Argentine crisis of December 2001. Nevertheless, the ERTs represent much more than a series of labour conflicts that culminate with the taking of factories and enterprises by workers. It is important to understand this process within the context of the almost total destruction of the nation’s productive apparatus and the sentencing of millions of workers to unemployment and structural marginality. Putting ERTs back into production signifies much for the almost 10,000 ERT workers that have engaged in these important and novel struggles, both from an economic as well as from a political and cultural point of view. In support of these workers, a research project out of the University of Buenos Aires has been developed to explore the historical, social, and economic contexts of the issues leading to the ERT movement and their particular characteristics and challenges. This research includes not only quantitative and qualitative data (detailed in the book The Recovered Enterprises in Argentina (Buenos Aires: Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Buenos Aires, 20051) but also a conceptual analysis pivoting on the concept of social innovation rooted in self-management. Fundamentally, we have come to understand this social innovation to include the strategies and methods destined to generate forms of productive unities outside of the paths dictated by the capitalist form of economic organization.
Read rest of paper.
posted by Marcelo Vieta at
12:25 PM
