May Day: workers of the world unite and take over – their factories
A 19th-century slogan is getting a 21st-century makeover. The workers of the world really are uniting. At least, some of them are.The economic meltdown unleashed by the 2008 financial crisis hit southern [url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/europe-news][color=#005689]Europe[/color][/url] especially hard, sending manufacturing output plunging and unemployment soaring. Countless factories shut their gates. But some workers at perhaps as many as 500 sites across the continent – a majority in Spain, but also in France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey – have refused to accept the corporate kiss of death.
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By negotiation, or sometimes by occupation, they have taken production into their own hands, embracing a movement that has thrived for several years in [url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/argentina][color=#005689]Argentina[/color][/url].
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In [url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/france][color=#005689]France[/color][/url], an average of 30 mostly small companies a year, from phone repair firms to ice-cream makers, have become workers’ co-operatives since 2010. Coceta, a co-operative umbrella group in Spain, reckons that in 2013 alone some 75 Spanish companies were taken over by their former employees – roughly half the total in the whole of Europe.
A gathering in Marseille last year of representatives from worker-controlled factories drew more than 200 delegates from more than a dozen countries – including pioneers from Argentina, whose turn-of-the-century economic crash sparked a wave of [i]fabricas recuperadas[/i] that today has left around 15,000 workers in charge at more than 300 workplaces. The fast-developing phenomenon is now a field of academic study; there are websites, such as [url=http://www.workerscontrol.net/][color=#005689]workerscontrol.net[/color][/url] and [url=http://www.autogestion.coop/][color=#005689]autogestion.coop[/color][/url], dedicated to it.
No two self-managed ventures launch in the same circumstances, and many face daunting obstacles: bureaucratic inertia and administrative red tape that can delay or even prevent production; legal opposition from former owners; a still-chilly economic climate; outdated machinery, or products no longer in demand. Lifelong union militants can find themselves, for the first time in their lives, making tough commercial decisions.
But many – for the time being at least – are making it work.
Introduction
Contents[list=1][*][url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/01/may-day-workers-of-the-world-unite-and-take-over-their-factories?CMP=share_btn_fb&from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0#nav0][color=#005689]France: ‘We decided to fight’[/color][/url][*][url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/01/may-day-workers-of-the-world-unite-and-take-over-their-factories?CMP=share_btn_fb&from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0#nav1][color=#005689]Spain: ‘This was new for us’[/color][/url][*][url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/01/may-day-workers-of-the-world-unite-and-take-over-their-factories?CMP=share_btn_fb&from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0#nav2][color=#005689]Greece: ‘This is about equality’[/color][/url][*][url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/01/may-day-workers-of-the-world-unite-and-take-over-their-factories?CMP=share_btn_fb&from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0#nav3][color=#005689]Argentina: ‘At first it was rough’[/color][/url][*][url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/01/may-day-workers-of-the-world-unite-and-take-over-their-factories?CMP=share_btn_fb&from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0#nav4][color=#005689]Turkey: ‘We like coming to work now’[/color][/url][/list]
France: ‘We decided to fight’Twenty minutes’ drive from the old port of Marseille, on a green and well-groomed industrial park outside the Provençal village of Gémenos, is Fralib, the largest tea factory in France.
Every year, 250-odd workers here turned six tonnes of carefully cured leaves into more than 2bn sachets of Lipton and Eléphant brand flavoured and scented teas – lemon, mint, Earl Grey – and soothing herbal infusions: linden, camomile, verbena.
But in September 2010, having spent five years steadily shifting half the factory’s production to Poland, its owner, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever, summarily announced it was closing the site.
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Tea junction: Fralib workers prepare to revive their factory. Photograph: Yohanne Lamoulère “It was … shocking,” said Olivier Lerberquier, a CGT union convenor at the factory. “Unilever France had just paid a huge dividend to shareholders. Fralib, this place, was profitable, even at half capacity. We decided to fight.”
It has been, by any standards, a long battle, but it seems nearly over: next month, 57 ex-Fralib employees, now reformed into a self-managed workers’ co-op, will switch on their machines again, and a factory silent for half a decade will once more produce tea.
Standing four-square in the cavernous main production hall at Gémenos, as long-underemployed operators checked pristine machinery and freshly trained technicians tested new quality-control equipment, Leberquier said few in France would have bet on the factory’s remaining workers getting this far.
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Olivier Leberquier, union man. Photograph: Yohanne Lamoulère “In the end, though, the length of the fight – 1,336 days, it was – almost helped us,” he said. “We got time to build solidarity, and a solid business plan. And even if, like our lawyer says, we’re now ‘condemned to succeed’, at least we know, for sure, that we have as good a chance as anyone.”
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The workers also got money. Unilever submitted four successive redundancy plans for the 182 people still employed at Fralib in 2010. All – including one proposal to relocate to Poland on an annual salary of
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