Building Factories Without Bosses: The Movement of Worker-Managed Factories in Argentina

Abstract

In the 1990s and 2000s, Argentina suffered one of the quickest and most extreme processes of neoliberal state reforms in the world, leading to the closure of numerous factories. To resist the increased unemployment produced by neoliberalism, workers started to organize in a movement aimed at defending their only source of income: their labor. In this article, I analyze the main characteristics of the movement of worker-managed factories in Argentina by exploring how factories were occupied, what motivated the workers' decision to create co-operatives, what made the factories economically viable, how they were legitimated by the community, which legal reforms workers achieved to support their struggle, and how they manage their factories.