politics | Against capitalism

FASINPAT: A Factory that Belongs to the People

The workers at Argentina's largest worker-controlled factory are celebrating a definitive legal solution to a nine-year struggle for the right to work and workers' self-determination. The provincial legislature of Neuquén voted in favor of expropriating the Zanon ceramics factory giving the workers' cooperative FASINPAT the right to manage the plant definitively. Since the workers occupied Zanon in 2001, they have successfully set up a system of workers' management, created jobs, duplicated production of ceramics, supported community projects, and spearheaded a network of over 200 recuperated enterprises. Zanon, renamed FASINPAT or Factory Without a Boss, can now continue production without threat of eviction from their factory.

Zanon Belongs to the People, Support the Workers.
Photo: radiouniversidad.wordpress.com.

Zanon, still Latin America's largest ceramics manufacturer, is located in the Patagonian province of Neuquén, a region with rich working class traditions, history, and mystique surrounding the red desert, rich forests, and crystalline lakes. The workers officially declared the factory under worker control in October 2001 following a lockout of the factory bosses.

In Argentina, more than 13,000 people work in occupied factories and businesses, otherwise known as recuperated enterprises. The sites, which number more than 200, range from hotels, to ceramics factories, to balloon manufacturers, to suit factories, to printing shops, and transport companies, as well as many other trades. Most of the occupations occurred following the nation's 2001 economic crisis when unemployment rates soared above 25% and poverty levels hovered over 50%. Zanon, as one of the largest and foremost factory occupations, became a symbol for millions of workers who lost their jobs during the worst economic crisis in Argentina's history, in which thousands of factories shut down. The cooperative has proved that factories can produce without a boss.MORE