Cooperativas de Trabajo y la Dificultad de Alcanzar la Autogestión Horizontal. Trayectoria y Análisis de una Fábrica Recuperada en Argentina

María Laura Henry and Julio César Neffa
Additional contact information
María Laura Henry: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). Universidad Nacional de Moreno (UNM).
Julio César Neffa: Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Laborales (CEIL) del Centro de Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). Universidad Nacional de Moreno (UNM). Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP). Universidad Nacional del Nordeste (UNNE).

Revista Ciencias Administrativas (CADM), IIA, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 2022, issue 20, No 2, 18 pages

Abstract: This article aims to examine the emergence of a worker-recovered factory, the way it became a worker cooperative and how it operates at present, in order to identify the scope and limits of self-management. The company under consideration is a paper manufacturing cooperative, located in the city of La Plata in Argentina. In the middle of the economic crisis of 2001, the company went bankrupt and the workers took over it so as not to lose their jobs and to continue producing. In this way, it became a worker-owned company managed by its workers that began to operate as a cooperative. The results presented are based on data collected through different techniques: in-depth interviews, participant observation, documentary review (reports, press articles, videos, etc.) and a survey applied to the whole population of workers in the cooperative. By the data collected, we were allowed to know the history of the cooperative, to analyze the changes in the labor process and especially, to identify the social and technical division of labor as well as the existing working relations. In the central part of our article we develop a series of aspects that we consider were an obstacle for the cooperative to unfold the full potential of self management. In this regard, firstly, we examine in what sense self-management emerged as a defensive strategy to keep jobs and was not an end in itself. Secondly, we show why in the cooperative under analysis there was a limited diffusion of self-management and cooperativism principles. This prevented the emergence of a new work culture, labor relations based on collaboration and trust, and a new view of the production process in which all workers feel committed to participate actively in the decision-making. Thirdly, we describe the existence of a fragmentation within the cooperative staff, on the basis of generational distance and on differential work values, which has prevented the consolidation of a group of workers with the same objectives. Finally, we explain how technical and technological determinants as well as the broader economic environment have limited the expansion of self-management in the factory under review.

Keywords: cooperatives; self-management; worker-recovered factories. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://revistas.unlp.edu.ar/CADM/article/view/12547 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lap:recadm:161

DOI: 10.24215/23143738e100

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revista Ciencias Administrativas (CADM), IIA, Universidad Nacional de La Plata from Instituto de Investigaciones Administrativas, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ana Clara Calabria ().