RECUPERATED FACTORIES BY WORKERS: the dilemmas of collective management of work

This article aims to analyze the dilemmas of the collective management in factories recuperated by workers in Brazil organized mostly in the 1990s. These factories were structured either as cooperatives or as hybrid forms of management, in a context of economic restructuring and of rising unemployment, in order to keep jobs. Generally, they had the support of labor unions, and progressively became part of the Solidarity Economy movement, which was institutionalized in the following decade. 20 years after the advent of the first projects of this kind, we sought not only to verify how they remained in the market and how they adapted to the political-economic changes of the period, but also to analyze their relation to the original proposals of self-management. This article has a longitudinal scope, seeking to study factories analyzed previously (in the late 1990s), which remained in activity. In addition, interviews with leaders and workers of the projects were made, as well as with leaders of support institutions such as ANTEAG and UNISOL Brazil. Although the ideals of cooperativism and self-management remain present in many workers’ speech, its implementation has found many obstacles in practice since recuperated factories in order to become viable endure many market pressures, which eventually modify some of their initial objectives.

本文旨在剖析20世纪90年代大多由工人组织发起的巴西工人自主接管工厂（Worker-recuperated Factories）的集体治理困境。在经济结构转型与失业率攀升的时代背景下，为保留就业岗位，这些工厂要么以合作社（Cooperatives）形式组建，要么采用混合型治理模式。此类工厂通常获得工会支持，并逐步纳入互助经济运动（Solidarity Economy Movement）体系，该运动于十年后完成制度化建设。在首批此类项目问世20年后，本文不仅旨在验证这些工厂如何立足市场、适配同期政治经济变革，还将剖析其与自主治理（Self-management）原始构想的关联。本文采用纵向研究视角，对此前（20世纪90年代末）已开展过分析且仍在运营的工厂展开追踪研究。此外，本文还对该类项目的负责人与工人，以及ANTEAG、巴西UNISOL等支持机构的负责人开展了访谈。尽管合作社理念与自主治理理念仍见于众多工人的表述中，但此类工人自主接管工厂要实现可持续运营需承受诸多市场压力，实践中其落地实施仍面临诸多阻碍，部分初始目标最终也因此发生了调整。