The Take, documentary by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, about workers in Argentina taking over factories abandoned by their owners.
Zanon Ceramics. After two years under worker control, it’s the granddaddy of this new movement. Today, the factory is in production with 300 workers. Decisions are made in assemblies: one worker, one vote. Everyone gets exactly the same salary.
A couple of years ago, the owner claimed that the plant was no longer profitable, that it had to be shut down. The workers refused to accept that fate. They argued that the company owed so much to the community in debts and public subsidies that it now belonged to everyone. In the Menem years, the Zanon factory had received millions in corporate welfare, and the owners still ran up huge debts. Now that his workers have restarted the machines, he’s back.
It works better than under the former owners, because at least people are working. The tiles are cheaper, and the future is brighter than it was under the owners. All they did was get subsidies from the state, nothing else, and they kept the money for themselves.
The community supports them 100 percent, because they’re not stealing, they’re not killing anyone. On the contrary, they’re working to feed their families.
Zanon’s community building has paid off. Since the workers’ takeover, they have fought off six separate eviction orders. Each time, thousands of supporters have flocked to the factory, set up defenses and been ready to put their bodies between the machines and the police. Each time, the judges’ trustees have retreated, leaving the factory under worker control. For now, Zanon really is the property of the people.
Today, the factories continue to operate, and better all the time. And also, there are new factories that are being recovered. And something else is also happening. Many organizations, many children of these factories, are being born with a horizontal work style, separate, completely autonomous of the government and political parties, creating a boss-less model and also new alternatives of cooperatives that are health cooperative projects, education, clothing, metalworking. Hundreds and hundreds of recovered factories and thousands and thousands of new projects, cooperative projects that are in solidarity, they’re also working with us. Lavaca is a cooperative. But, for example, they’re working with us on projects of psychiatric hospitals, and the doctors are discovering that the job, the work, helps to cure insanity.
Sergio Ciancaglini and your partner quit the corporate media to cover cooperatives like that and be part of a cooperative himself.
Argentine journalist Sergio Ciancaglini, co-author of Sin Patrón: Stories from Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories.
– from democracynow