The Take

On today's edition (RealVideo) of my favourite news program, ‘Democracy Now!’, they played a couple of fairly lengthy clips of a new documentary by Naomi Klein and CBC darling Avi Lewis about a labour movement in Argentina after the economic crash of 2001 where workers stayed in abandoned factories and started production again, independent of the owners who no longer saw the plants as profitable after the government stopped paying them large subsidies. But the workers in a tile factory that is shown as an example are now able to produce tile more cheaply than before, as the owner isn't taking a huge cut for himself, they are better able to feed their families, and they donate free tile to local hospitals.

The owner wants to grab his factory back, despite the fact that he is so heavily in debt from the factory that by all rights he should have lost it long ago. So now it's a matter of how much power the workers will be able to hold for themselves in a country that's one of the most corporate-friendly places around, thanks to its kowtowing to the IMF after the currency crisis.

The film isn't available yet, as it's playing at various film festivals, but I am definitely going to pick it up as soon as I can. In the mean time I'm going to keep an eye on the film's official web site, which has news updates and is keeping current on the actual situation down there, since the filmmakers are interested in the situation even after they finished the film.

Link: Workers Without Bosses — A good information resource about the worker-controlled factory phenomenon in Argentina.