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LABOUR-ARGENTINA: Working Without Bosses
By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Sep 14, 2005 (IPS) - Women are playing a major role in the
revolutionary Argentine workers' initiative of taking over factories that
have been abandoned by their owners, and in so doing, rescuing jobs and
salaries that seemed to have been lost forever.
"You can't cut off our water, we've paid all our bills," María Pino protests
over the phone, while using her free hand to rifle through a stack of papers
on a nearby shelf, searching for the file folder of receipts from the Aguas
Argentinas water company to prevent a cut-off.
Pino has worked at the Grissinópoli baked goods company in Buenos Aires for
33 years. She was the "right-hand woman" of a succession of company
presidents who ran the business from the height of prosperity into total
ruin. Today, although she earns the same wages as the company's 16 factory
floor workers, she holds the reins of this newly successful business, albeit
one faced with the burden of old debts.
Grissinópoli is a member of the National Movement of Factories Recovered by
Workers, a collective of roughly 80 companies formed in the late 1990s to
group together bankrupted businesses that had been abandoned by their
owners, but not by their employees.
The movement encompasses manufacturing and services industries hit by the
four-year recession that began in 1998 and culminated in 2001 with the
economic, social and political collapse that brought down the government of
President Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001).
As well as factories producing everything from textiles, ceramics, glass and
rubber to food and refrigerators, the network also includes transportation
companies, educational facilities and even hospitals. Most of them are
headed up by men, but in some cases, the horizontal organisational structure
has helped women move into leading roles.
One of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the world's
governments in 2000 is to promote gender equality and empower women. But in
this case, the progress achieved by women is not a result of a government
policy. On the contrary, it was the women themselves who took control of the
abandoned factories and other businesses and got them back on their feet.
The "recovered" factories are organised as cooperatives, with statutes and
licences to operate.
Legal permission to take over their operation was obtained by presenting
viability studies to the courts handling the corresponding bankruptcy
proceedings, or by applying to provincial legislatures to request their
expropriation.
The salaries drawn by the workers are called "returns". Everyone earns the
same wages, which are divvied up in accordance with the income taken in that
month. Decisions are adopted by majority vote in regularly scheduled
assemblies.
The Brukman textile factory, abandoned by its owners in late 2001, currently
employs 62 people, of whom 50 are women. Before the owners finally fled the
heavily indebted company, it had reached the point where the women working
there were paid a mere five pesos, or two dollars, a week.
The struggle to keep the factory from being shut down permanently dragged on
from late 2001 to late 2003, and led to clashes with the police, forced
evictions, and attempts to manipulate the protest for political purposes.
Finally, through successful organisation and a series of appeals to the
courts, the women were able to get the factory back up and running normally.
In the interim, three factory workers became pregnant and gave birth, and
the other women raised funds to cover their medical expenses and maternity
leaves.
Now each worker takes home around 600 pesos (205 dollars) a month, and new
staff are being hired.
The president of the cooperative is Elena Caliba. Her position does not
entail working any less than the others or receiving a higher salary, nor is
she authorised to adopt any decisions on her own.
"It means a lot more responsibility, because as well as working (on the
machines), we have to deal with all the accounting, paperwork and sales,"
she told IPS.
The company is finally out of the red. "Every time we make a sale, first we
cover expenses and taxes, and then we divide up the rest," she explained.
A similar situation was described by Liliana Correndo, from the cooperative
formed to recover the Israelite Hospital in Buenos Aires.
Founded in the early 1900s, the hospital received donations from the Jewish
community throughout many decades, and at one time employed 1,200 people.
But beginning in the mid-1990s, a series of poor management decisions
gradually ran it into the ground, while charitable contributions dried up.
In 2004, the courts declared the hospital bankrupt. "At that point there
were 400 of us working here, but a lot of people left, and at the time the
cooperative was created, there were less than 160 of us," recalled Correndo,
who was and continues to be an administrative employee at the hospital.
Since that time, the staff has grown once again to a total of almost 250
workers.
The cooperative was formed by nurses, lab technicians, and cleaning and
administrative staff. The vast majority of them are women. "The doctors are
not members of the cooperative, they're employees of the cooperative, and
earn more than we do," noted Correndo.
After the doctors' fees, debt payments, taxes and expenditures on supplies
are covered, there is enough left over for each employee to take home up to
150 pesos (around 50 dollars) a week, at most. "But in a few months we'll
start earning between 250 and 300 pesos a week, which will be amazing,"
remarked Correndo.
Between 2003 and 2004, the employees of the Israelite Hospital worked for
almost a year without pay, even though the hospital had been declared
bankrupt and they had officially been laid off.
Despite the bankruptcy, the abandonment by its directors and the lack of
salaries, the hospital continued to provide its urgently needed services.
Correndo does not believe that this hospital is run better simply because
there are women in charge. She knows that the threat of corruption is ever
present. But she also knows that there is a big difference between being a
mere employee and actually managing the facility, and therefore knowing
exactly how much money is coming in, how much is going out to cover
expenses, and how much will be left over for wages.
At Grissinópoli, Pino's management is highly efficient thanks to her many
years of experience with the company. The factory's earnings are used to pay
off debts, cover expenses, and contribute to a "reserve fund" created to
deal with unforeseen contingencies. The remainder is distributed among the
workers.
Pino meets with IPS in her "office", which is basically a desk in a
warehouse space on the upper floor of the factory. Down below, 16 factory
workers - nine women and seven men - are busy kneading, cutting, baking and
packing the baked goods produced by the company, while listening to music at
a much louder volume than when the bosses were around.
Each one takes home 1,300 pesos (445 dollars) a month, more than double the
normal salary for an unskilled factory worker in the food industry. "And if
we work more than eight hours, we get paid overtime," adds Pino.
Things were very different a few years back. "It was in 1998 that everything
started falling apart," she recalls. One of the partners in the company, who
was managing the factory at the time, made a number of bad business deals,
and tried to cover up the damage by hiding cheques and other documents.
In 2000, he was replaced as manager by another partner, who was "honest but
incompetent," and therefore unable to get the company back on its feet. At
the time, the workers were paid in dribs and drabs and large debts built up
in the form of back pay owed to workers.
"By the end they owed me two years salary," she noted, while other workers
were owed between four and six months pay. "Back then there were different
wage categories, and I earned a lot more," she added.
Every Friday the factory workers were paid 100 pesos. When their wages were
suddenly cut from 100 to 10 pesos a week without notice, in 2002, they went
on strike and occupied the factory. Pino laid down her conditions for
joining them: "I'll support you 100% of the way, but I won't sleep here,"
she said.
The occupation lasted seven months. The owners disappeared, and the unpaid
workers slept on the factory floor, among the machines. Production came to a
standstill, and neighbours and workers from other factories chipped in with
food and money.
Then the workers decided to organise as a cooperative. But after
successfully overcoming the legal hurdles, they were faced with "the fight
for sales," said Pino. Some of the factory's regular clients had disappeared
after the 2001 economic collapse, while others were now buying from the
competition.
Recovery came slowly. The factory now manufactures products sold under its
own brand name, as well as goods produced and packaged for other companies
that contract its services. Two more workers eventually had to be taken on.
In the meantime, the new management is fighting to keep the water supply
from being cut off because of debts that the workers did not incur. While
speaking with IPS, Pino continues to deal with the threat of an interruption
in water service, which is eventually resolved, proving that things really
have changed.
"I always did this work, but what's different now is that I have more
responsibility, because there's no one else above me," she remarked.
(END)
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