Factory take-overs

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Hi everyone!

I thought I would share some interesting examples of factory take overs by labour cooperatives all over the world!

An example from the US is The Working World.
As the financial crisis hit the US many factories were shut down which has been a hard blow for the low-income groups. When a factory owner files for bankruptcy she/he is protected by beneficial laws and investors are protected by limited liability which makes it an easy way out of a low-profit business. The workers on the other hand are left with practically nothing. The Working World supports former factory workers in creating cooperatives inspired by the take-overs in Argentina.

Occupation of shut-down factories is not a new phenomena, at least not if you go to Argentina. Some factories have been cooperative run for more than 10 years and are still going strong. A good documentary to watch is The Take by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis. It gives a good insight into the process and challenges from initial occupation to the real take-over.
If you are a bigger group of people interested in watching the documentary you can even contact Cinema Politica (which is another great initiative) and request to screen it (it has to be open to the public).

Another example is from Thailand:TryArm! These women used to work for Triumph Underwear but during labour rights demonstrations they decided to found their own cooperative in which they set their own working conditions. They have ”occupied” the Triump designs (some would argue stolen) but Triumph has not responded to this as they do not wish to attract attention to the working conditions on their garment factories.

I think these tendencies are very interesting to follow and they raise many questions, like ”Is a cooperative the same as a social business?”, ”Do they generate positive change for the general society or just the people involved?”, ”Are these companies more conserned with environmental sustainability than others?”, ”How do they organise and will this change over time?” ect.

Food for thought!