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Workers control in Argentina

The Brukman textile workers occupied their factory on 18 December when their boss- who owed them months of back wages disappeared from the factory. Rather than lose their jobs in the conditions of total economic meltdown which Argentina was entering, the workers in the Buenos Aires clothes factory decided to occupy.

As I approached the factory I was excited to see the banners and posters proclaiming that this was a factory the under workers’ occupation. I was met at the gates, showed around the factory and introduced to some workers there. Most of the workers are women and immigrants. Around 50 workers were producing clothes.

I asked whether women encountered any difficulties at home when they took the decision to occupy the factory. A male worker I was speaking to laughed, “yes, well, a few households were battlegrounds, but they got their way”.

The workers were worried at first about the legality of continuing production at the factory and then selling the stock. This means nothing less than the appropriation of the employers’ property. Would the courts and the police intervene to restore it to the boss?

Students were among the first to come to the factory to express their solidarity. However, soon after the workers occupied the mass demonstrations of December broke out. These revolutionary days gave the Brukman workers a new confidence.

The government and various bosses’ parties wanted Brukman turned into an officially recognised co-operative and lengthy discussions and debates among the workers ensued. However, the struggle at Brukman is part of a wider workers’ movement to occupy and take control over their factories or turn them into co-operatives.

It was the experiences of another occupied factory, Zanón, of the ceramic workers, which was to prove decisive in future developments at Brukman. The Zanón workers had opted for workers’ control of their factory, and expressed active solidarity with the workers at Brukman, who consequently refused to have their factory turned into a co-operative, but instead also decided for workers’ control.

Clearly the workers were being radicalised by what they saw around them and the solidarity they were given, so they now also started to sell the stock they had produced and they continue production and sales to this day.

Since the workers have been in charge at Brukman the production process at the factory has changed completely. I was told that the first thing was that no-one looked over their shoulders all the time anymore. The workers can now go to the toilet without being harassed,

The next development was that the workers re-organised the production process, so that now individuals did not sew trousers or sleeves or jackets all day, but all the machinists are together on one floor. They can talk to each other and follow the progress of each item of clothing. They were trying to find ways of combating the dehumanising and alienating elements of capitalist production.

Decisions are taken in open, regular meetings – assemblies – held by the workers. The aim of the meetings is to discuss and organise both the daily running of the factory, the production and sale of their products, and political activities. The organisation of and participation in rallies, demonstrations and solidarity work is organised and discussed.

The Brukman workers know that they have to fight together, and they have received and given a tremendous amount of solidarity. They have forged a political unity with the Ceramic workers at Zanon and they promote unity with the unemployment movement. They go on demonstrations together, and join each other in protests.

More recently Brukman has also come together with the factory of Grisonópolis and the printing shop of Chilavert in Buenos Aires which are trying to become co-operatives, who are willing to co-ordinate their struggles and fight together, and a large gig took place on Saturday 3 August in support of the three factories.

Neither the state nor the bosses can stand by inactive in the face of these events, and after a few months of Brukman being under the control of its own workforce, the boss came back, and a mandatory conciliation process began. But, as one of the workers there put it to me, “the union supported the bosses”, and they have “no consideration for the workers”. The Brukman workers had no interest in giving in to this process of reconciliation, which would have meant the return of their boss and the old ways.

Earlier in the year the police also briefly took over the Brukman factory. The police entered the factory at 9.00am in the morning, and the workers immediately contacted the media and the network of the popular assemblies. The popular assemblies had previously organised a solidarity commission for a strike fund for the workers as well as self-defence.

They had already witnessed the brutality and repression of the police in the December days and were aware that they must organise to defend themselves and their gains against the highly organised forces of the state. Hundreds of people were very quickly mobilised and demonstrators arrived banging pots in protest. Facing an ever-growing crowd the police quickly left. On the next day about 4000 people from the popular assemblies came to the factory to express their solidarity with the workers.

The workers of Brukman know that they cannot continue like this for ever, and they cannot go it alone. They want to see all workers in Argentina take over their factories, and they are calling for a general strike. Meetings to plan for a National Meeting of occupied have taken place at the Brukman factory.

As one of the workers stressed to me the Brukman workers do not want their bosses back: “We need to struggle to the end”

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