Criminalising workers: fighting for the right to work in Argentina

In Argentina during the 1990s, the government and the IMF implemented a drastic neoliberal economic program that provoked levels of unemployment and poverty previously unknown in the country. The collapse of economic and political institutions that characterised the crisis of 2001 forced many people to find alternative means of meeting their needs. Neighbourhood collectives, movements of the unemployed, asambleas barriales, student groups and other social movements built diverse projects of self-organisation: communal kitchens, exchange systems, popular assemblies, or education and health services. Confronted by mass factory closures and sackings, many workers decided to occupy and revive the means of production, defending their livelihoods and building new ways of understanding work. Despite the government’s attempts to suppress the movement, workers in over 200 companies across the country - representing diverse manufacturing and service sectors - have created sustainable enterprises that reject capitalist management, operating instead on the basis of egalitarian and democratic organisational forms.

As a result of intense conflict and legal battles where workers have demanded the right to work, the majority of companies in Buenos Aires achieved temporary legal status through the expropriation law. However, because powerful economic and political interests often want to take control of the now profitable companies, this situation is under constant threat. An important case is the worker-run Hotel Bauen; a four-star hotel in the heart of Buenos Aires transformed by workers from a centre for Argentina’s economic elite to a social institution that promotes alternative social, political and economic activity. The success of the hotel under worker-management means that groups connected to the former owner have sought to evict workers by any possible means. In 2005, workers and supporters fought a strong resistance campaign against attempts by right-wing sectors of the government to enforce a law that would have handed over the ownership of the hotel to the previous owner, despite his proven fraudulent activities and months of with-held wages. More recently, these groups have launched a new offensive that aims to criminalise the president of the cooperative for opening the hotel without ‘legal’ approval, suppressing the bankruptcy of the company and the huge economic and personal investment made by the workers themselves. Such an action essentially aims to impose the right of private property over people’s right to work. In response, workers of Hotel Bauen and solidarity groups call for an international denouncement of this attempt to criminalise workers struggling for the right to earn a living and support their families.