REPORTER: Elise West
The Sasetru factory in Buenos Aires was one of the largest food manufacturers in South America. But earlier this year, it was the scene of a revolutionary confrontation that's sweeping Argentina. Its workers had seized the means of production, breaking into the factory to occupy and run it for themselves.
SECURITY GUARD: (TRANSLATION): Gentlemen, this plant you have just occupied this is private property.
The factory had been abandoned by its multinational owner, leaving the workers unemployed and desperate. Three months later, the forces of capitalism struck back. The bosses sent in riot police to evict the workers and end the occupation.
POLICEMAN: (TRANSLATION): The police are entering the building and the doors are wide open. The first police cordon is entering the building of the Sasetru factory.
After hours of a pitched battle, the workers were eventually driven out of the factory. After the eviction, the Sasetru workers remain determined to get back into the factory.
VICTOR VASQUEZ: (TRANSLATION): It makes you sad, I mean, I worked here for some 20 years and to see it in this condition, it's production units that could have been working perfectly, feeding the workers and their families... but everything's stopped, everything's destroyed. It's sad.
Victor Vasquez worked as an electrician at Sasetru for most of his life. Now he leads the occupation campaign. He's driven by his desperate need for a job.
VICTOR VASQUEZ:(TRANSLATION): We argue that if those who should create jobs don't do it, then the workers must step forward and do it themselves. We know it's a huge struggle against very powerful interests, but we have no other option.
SERGIO DATILLO, EDITOR OF FINANCIAL DAILY: This is serious. I mean if this example spreads across society, I mean, this is what...
Sergio Datillo is an editor at the conservative financial daily 'Ambito Financiero'.
SERGIO DATILLO: If you allow a group of people to take over private property, whatever it is, it's a very bad sign, especially today in Argentina we need investment, we need people wanting to invest to create new jobs and these are steps in the opposite direction, in my opinion.
The Sasetru factory was one of the biggest in a wave of factory occupations across Argentina. Already 10,000 workers have seized their workplaces and there are more every month.
VICTOR VASQUEZ: (TRANSLATION): The only alternative, if you don't take over a factory, if you don't create a source of employment, is to stay at home and starve, and watch your children starve to death. Imagine how, in a short time, all your life plans, your family, and everything else, fall apart. You're left with nothing.
Victor and his work-mates lost everything when Argentina slid into one of the biggest economic collapses in history. In 2001, years of mismanagement, recession and an overvalued peso began to take their toll. Bankruptcies and unemployment were skyrocketing. Restrictions had been placed on bank withdrawals, enraging the middle class.
By December, huge demonstrations and outbreaks of looting filled the streets of the capital. President Fernando de la Rua declared a state of emergency.
PRESIDENT FERNANDO de la RUA, (TRANSLATION): The difficult times our country is experiencing are the culmination of a long process of deterioration.
The middle class joined angry workers in the streets, forcing the government to resign. At least 24 people were killed in police repression.
SERGIO DATILLO: Basically, it was a middle class demonstration that evolved into a pre-revolutionary situation, as the Marxists like to say.
REPORTER: Do you think it can happen again?
SERGIO DATILLO: Oh yeah, absolutely.
In the midst of the chaos, Argentina defaulted on $143 billion of debt, and the economy imploded. In this once prosperous country, millions of people fell into poverty almost overnight. When the Sasetru factory was abandoned, the workers were forced to subsist on government rations - the only form of welfare available to them. Their conclusion was that the system had utterly failed.
Unlike thousands of others, the IMPA aluminium plant survived the crisis. It was occupied by its workers 13 years ago, and runs itself as a co-op. It's a model for occupied business, and for the Sasetru workers a potent symbol that they can make their factory work again.
EDUARDO MURUE, PRESIDENT OF NATIONAL MOVEMENT OF RECUPERATED COMPANIES: (TRANSLATION): In IMPA we earn on average some 900 peso, a month. That's only US$300. We all earn the same, from the cooperative's chairman to its lowest employee.
REPORTER, (TRANSLATION): What if you produce more?
EDUARDO MURUE, (TRANSLATION): Then we earn more. But if we produce less, we earn less! We get paid according to our earnings.
Eduardo Murue is president of the steadily growing National Movement of Recuperated Companies.
REPORTER, (TRANSLATION): Is this a real workers' paradise?
EDUARDO MURUE: (TRANSLATION): No way, because the job is still boring. I see many of my work-mates working almost nine hours a day making tubes. Making tubes for nine hours isn't paradise! And sometimes we work 11 hours to produce more. I done think that's paradise. But it's satisfying to know that we have our jobs and we may be privileged compared to other workers.
Eduardo wants the government to recognise the occupations as a viable economic alternative.
EDUARDO MURUE: (TRANSLATION): We're certain that if the State took this up as public policy we could quickly recover 200,000 jobs.
It's not just factories, the luxury Hotel Bauen went bankrupt in the crash and is now occupied by its workers.
REPORTER, (TRANSLATION): Did you play piano in this hotel?
GUILLERMO, (TRANSLATION): No, I played in other hotels. But when this one opens, I'll play here. I wrote a song for the Movement of Recuperated Companies. I'm going to write it doin down... I'll play it for you. It goes like this...
Workers are discovering that the law can be on their side. Today the hotel workers are lobbying Buenos Aires city councillors to legalise their occupation.
GABRIEL, (TRANSLATION): Now that we've made some finishing touches, we've submitted an economic feasibility plan. It shows that it is viable, charging a low rate, in the current market situation. With an occupancy rate of some 60% we estimate that it can be profitable. We have everything ready to start. We just need the political decision.
Osvaldo Claverino worked as a maintenance man here for 15 years.
OSVALDO CLAVERINO, (TRANSLATION): I may not have many working years left but I want this for whoever comes after me. If I don't struggle now, that kid won't have this source of employment.
He shows councillor Beatrice Baltroc that despite the lack of capital and bed linen, the hotel is ready for business as a worker's cooperative.
OSVALDO CLAVERINO, (TRANSLATION): There are things to do. Some minor pieces are missing. Still, it's all set up. What do you think?
BEATRICE BALTROC, COUNCILOR: (TRANSLATION): It's wonderful. There's even a dryer. Look at that. I want to stay!
The councillors are sympathetic.
BEATRICE BALTROC, (TRANSLATION): I think this is spot on. Because the Bauen is a symbol. It was a symbol of what the decadence meant and now it's a symbol of recovery.
EDUARDO MURUE, (TRANSLATION): I don't think the lift works. We fixed the lifts ourselves.
The council has already legally handed dozens of privately owned businesses to the workers who squatted them. A clause in the Argentinian constitution allows for seizure of private property when it can be shown to be in the interests of the common good.
SERGIO DATILLO: This is not, again, not the right way to create jobs, no, I don't think. I don't think it's for the common good, no.
For Sergio Datillo, the growing legal and social acceptance of worker occupations is alarming.
SERGIO DATILLO: I talk and have a close relationship with many business people in Argentina and they are scared. Not only because of this new phenomenon of occupying factories, but they are scared because the signs that come from the government are very concerning.
Sergio Datillo's boss, the media magnate Julio Ramos, puts it a little more bluntly.
JULIO RAMOS, MEDIA MAGNATE: (TRANSLATION): The current president, Nestor Kirchner, is trying to impose or to move towards the stage Hugo Chavez has reached in Venezuela, or eventually to Fidel Castro. That is crazy, because the Left in Argentina usually gets between 6% and 10% of the vote. So, they're seeing how much they can get away with.
New President Nestor Kirchner did indeed cause a stir when he invited Fidel Castro and Venezuela's controversial Hugo Chavez to his inauguration in May this year. Kirchner is not a socialist, but he has irritated the conservative establishment by not cracking down on worker occupations. Like many other Latin-American leaders, he can't afford to ignore the growing sense of power from Argentina's poor and unemployed.
PRESIDENT NESTOR KIRCHNER, (TRANSLATION): We know that the problem of our debt is crucial. We're not talking of not complying, of not paying. We do not agree with defaulting but we can't pay if the cost means even more Argentines being denied access to decent housing and secure jobs, to education for their children and to health care.
Already he's under considerable pressure. Last month, Argentina defaulted on still more debt. And the worker occupations continue.
VICTOR VASQUEZ: (TRANSLATION): We struggle because we're convinced that unless we manage to reopen the sources of employment, we'll be sitting on the footpath, watching life pass us by.
Three months after their eviction from the factory, it's crunch time for the Sasetru workers.
WORKERS, (TRANSLATION): Come on, get on. Come on. Get moving.
Today the provincial parliament is deciding on a law to hand them back the factory, and they're mobilising their supporters.
SERGIO, (TRANSLATION): We're very close. We're in the penalty area, and about to score a goal.
CROWD, (TRANSLATION): We are together and we are the workers. To those who don't like it, tough shit!
The provincial parliament is controlled by Nestor Kirchner's party. The pressure from the workers outside is keenly felt. Debate is short. The bill will grant the workers ownership of the factory under the common good provisions in the constitution. The vote is unanimous.
CROWD, (TRANSLATION): We have to change our history. No more of this crap. Employers can get stuffed and power to the workers! What a joy! What a joy! Ole! Ole!
It's an amazing victory for the workers, and a sign of the growing power of the occupation's movement.
AMALIA, (TRANSLATION): I'm very moved, honey.
REPORTER, (TRANSLATION): Why are you moved?
AMALIA, (TRANSLATION): The joy I feel. They all said they weren't going to approve it. I was told even this morning... We'll see what happens, the day we get in...
Worker occupations can't solve Argentina's woes alone, but workers have been emboldened by their successes, and at least at Sasetru there's no going back to the past.
REPORTER, (TRANSLATION): If the owners of Sasetru came tomorrow and offered to give you your jobs back, would you accept?
SERGIO DATILLO: (TRANSLATION): No, we're certain we don't want to go back to the situation as it was... The bosses are a thing of the past... At least for us, they're a thing of the past.
The Sasetru factory in Buenos Aires was one of the largest food manufacturers in South America. But earlier this year, it was the scene of a revolutionary confrontation that's sweeping Argentina. Its workers had seized the means of production, breaking into the factory to occupy and run it for themselves.
SECURITY GUARD: (TRANSLATION): Gentlemen, this plant you have just occupied this is private property.
The factory had been abandoned by its multinational owner, leaving the workers unemployed and desperate. Three months later, the forces of capitalism struck back. The bosses sent in riot police to evict the workers and end the occupation.
POLICEMAN: (TRANSLATION): The police are entering the building and the doors are wide open. The first police cordon is entering the building of the Sasetru factory.
After hours of a pitched battle, the workers were eventually driven out of the factory. After the eviction, the Sasetru workers remain determined to get back into the factory.
VICTOR VASQUEZ: (TRANSLATION): It makes you sad, I mean, I worked here for some 20 years and to see it in this condition, it's production units that could have been working perfectly, feeding the workers and their families... but everything's stopped, everything's destroyed. It's sad.
Victor Vasquez worked as an electrician at Sasetru for most of his life. Now he leads the occupation campaign. He's driven by his desperate need for a job.
VICTOR VASQUEZ:(TRANSLATION): We argue that if those who should create jobs don't do it, then the workers must step forward and do it themselves. We know it's a huge struggle against very powerful interests, but we have no other option.
SERGIO DATILLO, EDITOR OF FINANCIAL DAILY: This is serious. I mean if this example spreads across society, I mean, this is what...
Sergio Datillo is an editor at the conservative financial daily 'Ambito Financiero'.
SERGIO DATILLO: If you allow a group of people to take over private property, whatever it is, it's a very bad sign, especially today in Argentina we need investment, we need people wanting to invest to create new jobs and these are steps in the opposite direction, in my opinion.
The Sasetru factory was one of the biggest in a wave of factory occupations across Argentina. Already 10,000 workers have seized their workplaces and there are more every month.
VICTOR VASQUEZ: (TRANSLATION): The only alternative, if you don't take over a factory, if you don't create a source of employment, is to stay at home and starve, and watch your children starve to death. Imagine how, in a short time, all your life plans, your family, and everything else, fall apart. You're left with nothing.
Victor and his work-mates lost everything when Argentina slid into one of the biggest economic collapses in history. In 2001, years of mismanagement, recession and an overvalued peso began to take their toll. Bankruptcies and unemployment were skyrocketing. Restrictions had been placed on bank withdrawals, enraging the middle class.
By December, huge demonstrations and outbreaks of looting filled the streets of the capital. President Fernando de la Rua declared a state of emergency.
PRESIDENT FERNANDO de la RUA, (TRANSLATION): The difficult times our country is experiencing are the culmination of a long process of deterioration.
The middle class joined angry workers in the streets, forcing the government to resign. At least 24 people were killed in police repression.
SERGIO DATILLO: Basically, it was a middle class demonstration that evolved into a pre-revolutionary situation, as the Marxists like to say.
REPORTER: Do you think it can happen again?
SERGIO DATILLO: Oh yeah, absolutely.
In the midst of the chaos, Argentina defaulted on $143 billion of debt, and the economy imploded. In this once prosperous country, millions of people fell into poverty almost overnight. When the Sasetru factory was abandoned, the workers were forced to subsist on government rations - the only form of welfare available to them. Their conclusion was that the system had utterly failed.
Unlike thousands of others, the IMPA aluminium plant survived the crisis. It was occupied by its workers 13 years ago, and runs itself as a co-op. It's a model for occupied business, and for the Sasetru workers a potent symbol that they can make their factory work again.
EDUARDO MURUE, PRESIDENT OF NATIONAL MOVEMENT OF RECUPERATED COMPANIES: (TRANSLATION): In IMPA we earn on average some 900 peso, a month. That's only US$300. We all earn the same, from the cooperative's chairman to its lowest employee.
REPORTER, (TRANSLATION): What if you produce more?
EDUARDO MURUE, (TRANSLATION): Then we earn more. But if we produce less, we earn less! We get paid according to our earnings.
Eduardo Murue is president of the steadily growing National Movement of Recuperated Companies.
REPORTER, (TRANSLATION): Is this a real workers' paradise?
EDUARDO MURUE: (TRANSLATION): No way, because the job is still boring. I see many of my work-mates working almost nine hours a day making tubes. Making tubes for nine hours isn't paradise! And sometimes we work 11 hours to produce more. I done think that's paradise. But it's satisfying to know that we have our jobs and we may be privileged compared to other workers.
Eduardo wants the government to recognise the occupations as a viable economic alternative.
EDUARDO MURUE: (TRANSLATION): We're certain that if the State took this up as public policy we could quickly recover 200,000 jobs.
It's not just factories, the luxury Hotel Bauen went bankrupt in the crash and is now occupied by its workers.
REPORTER, (TRANSLATION): Did you play piano in this hotel?
GUILLERMO, (TRANSLATION): No, I played in other hotels. But when this one opens, I'll play here. I wrote a song for the Movement of Recuperated Companies. I'm going to write it doin down... I'll play it for you. It goes like this...
Workers are discovering that the law can be on their side. Today the hotel workers are lobbying Buenos Aires city councillors to legalise their occupation.
GABRIEL, (TRANSLATION): Now that we've made some finishing touches, we've submitted an economic feasibility plan. It shows that it is viable, charging a low rate, in the current market situation. With an occupancy rate of some 60% we estimate that it can be profitable. We have everything ready to start. We just need the political decision.
Osvaldo Claverino worked as a maintenance man here for 15 years.
OSVALDO CLAVERINO, (TRANSLATION): I may not have many working years left but I want this for whoever comes after me. If I don't struggle now, that kid won't have this source of employment.
He shows councillor Beatrice Baltroc that despite the lack of capital and bed linen, the hotel is ready for business as a worker's cooperative.
OSVALDO CLAVERINO, (TRANSLATION): There are things to do. Some minor pieces are missing. Still, it's all set up. What do you think?
BEATRICE BALTROC, COUNCILOR: (TRANSLATION): It's wonderful. There's even a dryer. Look at that. I want to stay!
The councillors are sympathetic.
BEATRICE BALTROC, (TRANSLATION): I think this is spot on. Because the Bauen is a symbol. It was a symbol of what the decadence meant and now it's a symbol of recovery.
EDUARDO MURUE, (TRANSLATION): I don't think the lift works. We fixed the lifts ourselves.
The council has already legally handed dozens of privately owned businesses to the workers who squatted them. A clause in the Argentinian constitution allows for seizure of private property when it can be shown to be in the interests of the common good.
SERGIO DATILLO: This is not, again, not the right way to create jobs, no, I don't think. I don't think it's for the common good, no.
For Sergio Datillo, the growing legal and social acceptance of worker occupations is alarming.
SERGIO DATILLO: I talk and have a close relationship with many business people in Argentina and they are scared. Not only because of this new phenomenon of occupying factories, but they are scared because the signs that come from the government are very concerning.
Sergio Datillo's boss, the media magnate Julio Ramos, puts it a little more bluntly.
JULIO RAMOS, MEDIA MAGNATE: (TRANSLATION): The current president, Nestor Kirchner, is trying to impose or to move towards the stage Hugo Chavez has reached in Venezuela, or eventually to Fidel Castro. That is crazy, because the Left in Argentina usually gets between 6% and 10% of the vote. So, they're seeing how much they can get away with.
New President Nestor Kirchner did indeed cause a stir when he invited Fidel Castro and Venezuela's controversial Hugo Chavez to his inauguration in May this year. Kirchner is not a socialist, but he has irritated the conservative establishment by not cracking down on worker occupations. Like many other Latin-American leaders, he can't afford to ignore the growing sense of power from Argentina's poor and unemployed.
PRESIDENT NESTOR KIRCHNER, (TRANSLATION): We know that the problem of our debt is crucial. We're not talking of not complying, of not paying. We do not agree with defaulting but we can't pay if the cost means even more Argentines being denied access to decent housing and secure jobs, to education for their children and to health care.
Already he's under considerable pressure. Last month, Argentina defaulted on still more debt. And the worker occupations continue.
VICTOR VASQUEZ: (TRANSLATION): We struggle because we're convinced that unless we manage to reopen the sources of employment, we'll be sitting on the footpath, watching life pass us by.
Three months after their eviction from the factory, it's crunch time for the Sasetru workers.
WORKERS, (TRANSLATION): Come on, get on. Come on. Get moving.
Today the provincial parliament is deciding on a law to hand them back the factory, and they're mobilising their supporters.
SERGIO, (TRANSLATION): We're very close. We're in the penalty area, and about to score a goal.
CROWD, (TRANSLATION): We are together and we are the workers. To those who don't like it, tough shit!
The provincial parliament is controlled by Nestor Kirchner's party. The pressure from the workers outside is keenly felt. Debate is short. The bill will grant the workers ownership of the factory under the common good provisions in the constitution. The vote is unanimous.
CROWD, (TRANSLATION): We have to change our history. No more of this crap. Employers can get stuffed and power to the workers! What a joy! What a joy! Ole! Ole!
It's an amazing victory for the workers, and a sign of the growing power of the occupation's movement.
AMALIA, (TRANSLATION): I'm very moved, honey.
REPORTER, (TRANSLATION): Why are you moved?
AMALIA, (TRANSLATION): The joy I feel. They all said they weren't going to approve it. I was told even this morning... We'll see what happens, the day we get in...
Worker occupations can't solve Argentina's woes alone, but workers have been emboldened by their successes, and at least at Sasetru there's no going back to the past.
REPORTER, (TRANSLATION): If the owners of Sasetru came tomorrow and offered to give you your jobs back, would you accept?
SERGIO DATILLO: (TRANSLATION): No, we're certain we don't want to go back to the situation as it was... The bosses are a thing of the past... At least for us, they're a thing of the past.