One of our site visits this week was to a recovered factory called IMPA. Worker-recovered factories have a pretty wild history in Buenos Aires. The country had very few workers' rights laws until very recently, meaning that in times of crisis, a factory owner could stop paying workers when he knew he was no longer making money from the business and basically shutdown a plant overnight, leaving workers jobless.
In several cases, the workers would join together to form a cooperative and reopen the factory. The State would send officers to remove the workers from the factories, but the workers continued to fight for the right to work to make a living. While many of the cooperatives were taken down by the State and police forces, others have survived. The successful worker-run factories, however, still fight for State recognition, and many are in a vulnerable position in which the factory could still be shut down at any minute.
IMPA was particularly interesting to see for two reasons --
1. The factory is in the process of opening a cultural center/museum to share its history with the local community and general public. The building and the fact that there were only 4 or 5 workers in the entire plant made the cooperative feel that it could be choked off at any minute. Nearly 10 years ago, the State cut the building off from receiving electricity, but the factory has since been running on private generators. It's hard to imagine such a lack of rights and protection for businesses. Part of the reason for starting the cultural center is to create awareness, and -- theoretically -- to help revive interest and integrate into the local community.
2. Another way in which the factory is active in the local community is by running a bachi popular inside, essentially an alternative high school for kids who had dropped out of traditional school and adults who never had the opportunity to complete high school. The school is free to attend, and I was surprised by how much power and voice students have. Students take ownership in taking care of the space (i.e. painting the rooms, collecting random bits of furniture to use for a student lounge etc.), create rules in collaboration with teachers (apparently everyone was onboard with smoking in the classroom...), and some of the students told us that they hold each other accountable for their actions when they misbehave in class. The students also helped the school's teachers to gain State recognition, accreditation, and State-funded salaries for the teachers. The school provided a "second chance" for many students who were unable to integrate into the traditional system, so the students all seemed to really value the fact that they could be there and making progress toward a high school diploma.
We also visited several elementary schools in small groups. I went to a school called Mundo Nuevo, another cooperative school that was founded 40 years ago when a teacher at a nearby school was fired rather than granted maternity leave. Teachers and parents decided they wanted to build a different kind of school in the community and founded Mundo Nuevo as a workers cooperative. ]
Mundo Nuevo was quite different from IMPA, first of all, in that it charges tuition of 1500 pesos per month (somewhere around $350). The building itself was nice, well maintained, and it didn't have nearly the same "hanging on by a thread" feel that IMPA did. The school had been requesting State funding, but turned down an offer for State salaries, worried that this would cause too much stratification within the organization and would cause them to lose sight of the things that made the business a cooperative. Rather, they are still pushing for State funding in terms of a block grant from which all teachers can be continued to be paid under the same pay scheme and not be forced to default to the salary differentials as defined by the State.
More on other highlights of the trip soon---
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