Workers’ Self-management, Recovered Companies and the Sociology of Work

Abstract

We analyse how far Argentina’s worker-recovered companies (WRCs) have sustained themselves and their principles of equity and workers’ self-management since becoming widespread following the country’s 2001–2 economic crisis. Specialist Spanish-language sources, survey data and documents are analysed through four key sociological themes. We find that the number of WRCs has increased in Argentina, and that they represent a viable production model. Further, they have generally maintained their central principles and even flourished. This occurred despite the global economic crisis, legal and financial pressures to adopt capitalist practices and management structures, the risk of market absorption and state attempts to coopt, demobilise and depoliticise the movement. We argue that today they function as a much-needed international beacon of an alternative vision for labour and that integration of their experience has potential to revitalise the field.

Practices of Labor Activism in Greece: Inside and Outside the Workplace

“…Two types of self‐management came into practice and were widely discussed among activists in the crisis period: self‐management as an attempt to continue running companies under closure—also known in the literature as “worker‐recovered companies” (WRCs) (Ozarow and Croucher )—and setting up new workers' co‐operatives. How do these initiatives fit in the broader context just described, where workers are pushed out of the wage relation?…”

“…In addition, there are suggestions that self‐management can offer a reliable way of re‐entering a secure wage‐relation at times of crisis. Studies of WRCs in Argentina (Ozarow and Croucher ) and of three co‐operatives in Greece (Kokkinidis ) argue that these enterprises can be successful in becoming economically viable while living up to their principles of horizontality, solidarity, work stability, equality of pay, community embeddedness, and breaking “the circuit of capital” (Ozarow and Croucher , 1,002).…”

The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America

“…There is extensive literature on WRCs. The attention of the authors has focused on workers' experience of management, control of the labour process and new forms of industrial relations within the factories (Aiziczon, 2009;Deledicque and Moser, 2006); politics and experiences of resistance and mobilisation strategies (Picchetti, 2002;Fajn, 2003;Meyer and Chaves, 2008); workers' subjectivity (Fajn, 2003;Shukaitis, 2010); legalities and politicalities (Carpintero et al, 2002;Martínez and Vocos, 2002;Echaide, 2006;Vietta and Ruggieri, 2009), the relation between WRCs and the market (Atzeni and Ghigliani, 2007); and WRCs and the state policy (Dinerstein, 2007;Upchurch et al, 2014;Ozarow and Croucher, 2014).…”

“…In the first case of occupations and recovery, the events forced workers to act quickly. In others, the occupation and recovery became a logical direction to take, drawing from the experience of previous occupations (see Ozarow and Croucher, 2014).…”

“…Critics argue that the WRCs are at risk of getting into self-exploitation, that is, that the WRCs can become 'little more than the self-organisation and management of one's own misery and exploitation' (Shukaitis, 2010: 66) with the risk of self-surveillance, subordination to market conditions and political co-optation, with a democratic management always being constrained by the urgencies and demands of the market (Atzeni and Ghigliani, 2007: 657 and 661;Deledicque et al, 2005;Ozarow and Croucher, 2014). The lack of available cheap credit and the problems that arise from the precarious legal situation due to the inefficiency of the application of the bankruptcy law led to a precarious consolidation of the process (Magnani, 2014).…”