Argentina

Solidarity with Argentinian workers!

Message from some workers in Argentina via the Argentina Solidarity Campaign

Dear friends,

We are writing to ask for your solidarity in our difficult struggle. We are workers of The Value Brand (TVB), a soap and cleaning products factory in San Justo, Buenos Aires province. TVB is an investment...

From workers’ control to workers’ rule

Argentina's 2001 economic collapse saw a wave of working-class struggles against Fernando de la Rua’s right-wing government and neoliberal IMF-sponsored economics. During these struggles, some 200 workplaces were occupied and taken over by their workers. Does this “recovered factories” movement pose any sort of threat to capitalism? David Broder, who visited the occupied Zanon ceramics factory in April, looks at the issues. NAOMI Klein has described these “recuperated factories” as “the concrete economic alternative to neoliberalism”. It is a great ideological step for workers to ignore...

Workers’ control and socialism

By Paul Hampton “Control lies in the hands of the workers. This means: ownership and right of disposition remain in the hands of the capitalists. Thus, the regime has a contradictory character, presenting a sort of economic interregnum… “In a developed form, workers’ control thus implies a sort of economic dual power in the factory, the bank, commercial enterprise, and so forth. “If the participation of the workers in the management of production is to be lasting, stable, ‘normal’, it must rest upon class collaboration, and not upon class struggle. Such a collaboration can be realised only...

Argentina: fighting the Catholic ban on abortion

Andrea D’Atri, a professor at the Argentinian national university of La Plata, is active within the Argentinian women’s group Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses). She spoke to AWL about her campaign. What is the current situation for women in Argentina? Until recently feminism in Argentina was relatively weak and very middle-class. After the economic crisis of 2001 and the social movements that emerged in response, feminist groups have politicised and radicalised. In particular, women have begun to mobilise around the issue of abortion rights. Abortion in Argentina is illegal under any circumstances...

A factory without bosses

The Zanon factory in Neuquén province in Argentina has operated under workers’ control for four years. It is a great example of the creativity of working class people. Julian Pununuri from Zanon spoke to Paul Hampton during his recent UK tour, organised by No Sweat and the Argentina Solidarity Campaign. PH: Zanon is an inspiration to socialists and activists across the globe. What’s going on there now? JP: The struggle continues, supported by the local community, the unemployed organisations (MTD), the left and of course the workers in the factory. The factory’s former owners decided to shut...

Zanon tour: Factories without bosses

The Zanon tile factory in Neuquen is one of many “recovered” factories in Argentina – factories taken over and run by the workers. Faced with pay cuts and redundancies – and then no pay at all – the Zanon workers occupied and began to run the factory. They are coming to Britain to discuss their experience with activists here. Despite several attempted evictions, the workers, supported by their local community and allies have held out and even managed to dramatically increase production, sales and jobs. Alongside all this they publish Nuestra Lucha (Our Struggle) – a newspaper of the occupied...

Zanon: a factory without bosses

The Zanon tile factory in Neuquen is one of many “recovered’ factories in Argentina – factories taken over and run by the workers in the last five years, in the wake of capitalist economic collapse in the that country. Here the workers tell their story. In 2000 when the Zanon company announced that it had operational and commercial difficulties. And in that year one of the workers, 22-year-old Daniel Ferrás, was taken ill while working in the plant. The company did not have the necessary health facilities and Daniel died on his way to hospital. We workers took to the streets for the first time...

Workers' news round-up

Bolivia The Bolivian elections on 18 December are being hailed as the end of 20 years of neoliberalism. Evo Morales, from the Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, who came second in the 2002 presidential election, is the leading candidate in the polls, with over 30% of the vote. The elections were called after the uprising in May-June this year, which forced out sitting president Carlos Mesa. The left in Bolivia do not believe the election or Morales will solve the problems facing Bolivian workers. Oscar Olivera, leader of the Coordinator of the Defence of Water and Life in Bolivia, the...

Experiments In Struggle

Dan Katz reviews The Take, a film by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein In the early 1990s Argentina’s government under Carlos Menem carried out IMF instructions and pegged the local currency, the peso, to the dollar in order to check inflation. State owned banks, publicly owned utilities and airlines were privatised. Later in the 90s the economy went into recession. The new government of the Radical Party borrowed from the IMF and, in return, made cuts in health and education spending. In 2001 the GDP was $97 billion and the debt stood at $240 billion. At the end of 2001 Argentina defaulted on its...

Argentinian workers strike for higher pay

Argentinian rail workers joined health workers, dockers and others in a 24-hour strike on Thursday 28 July, demanding higher pay. Rail union reps said that after the failure of negotiations for over 100 days they decided to strike. They also warned that if there is no agreement in a week, they will escalate the action to 36 hours, with a 48 hour strike the following week. The capital Buenos Aires came to a standstill, with buses also disrupted. Only the tube system carried on running. Health workers were also out on a 72 hour strike. Pay in their sector has been frozen for almost fifteen years...

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