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Factories recovered by workers
Results

The National Movement of Recovered Factories (Spanish version MNFRT) continues to work in Argentina for the recovery of the factories in all the country, motivated by the results obtained in terms of impact and also for firmly believing that work has to be valued as an indispensible way to satisfy the spiritual and material needs, as a achievement of civilization and the basis for general prosperity. The obtained results can be summarized in the following aspects.

The impact of the recuperated Factories in numbers

As already mentioned, more than 20.000 workers currently manage 300 recovered factories around all the country. These factories, managed by its cooperatives, operate in the most different areas of production such as:
as cattle refrigerators, pig and poultry; textile and clothing; heavy and light metals; food such as bakery, cold meat and confectionery; health care such as hospitals and clinics; paper mills, tanneries, footwear, printing presses and newspapers; shipyards and construction

The National Movement of the Recovered Factories has been able to steer Argentina to orient its Law of Bankruptcy towards the objective to create jobs, thanks to the nature of the Movement that has no political objectives, but the dialogue with all other partners and officials of the country belonging to all the political parties, who are committed to the recuperation of the factories. In July of 2011 the Senate of the Republic approved the decree that promulgates the Reform of the Law of Competition and Bankruptcy, delivering in hand of the workers of the recovered factories by the President of the Argentine Nation.

The central aspects of the new Law are the following:

• The reform contemplates that the judges have the possibility to grant the immediate continuity of production under the administration of the workers that are organized in Cooperatives. The Cooperatives only fulfil the formal request, through an investment project of production and sales. Once the judges have transferred this to the union, he/she has to allow the Cooperative the use of the factory.

• The reform sets the labor and pledged credits at equal levels. In particular, the interest rates of the labor credits are not suspended, and the latter will be updated since the date when they should have been paid and the effective date of when they are paid. With this modification workers have equal condition with the creditor in terms of interest rate: the bankruptcy gives the right to collect 100% of the labor credits owed to the worker for its food kind (the compensation considered before was of 50%). The Labor Privilege is extended to the Trade Fund, brands and patents (in the previous law the Labor Privilege regarded only the acquisition of raw material, merchandise, and machinery). The workers will be able to compensate the labor credit for the acquisition of the equipment, raw material, merchandise, trade funds, brands and patents.

• With the reform the workers have the right to make an offer to be awarded the ownership of the assets of the bankruptcy, at a price of appraisal defined by the judge. This price should be a fair one and it should protect the interest of the creditors of which the workers are also part. In the previous law the judge could not adjudge directly the assets and -with the exception of special cases- had to call a tender or an auction.
• Direct adjudication is reached because the mortgage executions and collateral were suspended and also the time limit before liquidation is extended until the judge determines a due date and complying with the economic cycle that cannot be inferior to 24 months, giving the possibility of capitalization to workers to create the supply for direct purchase.

This decree represents a fundamental step to allow to extend the impact of the process of recovery of the factories and mainly to establish that the principle the right to work has to be protected by society that should consider it with the dignity it deserves and provide employment for those who need it. This law creates the conditions so that thousand of workers may keep producing in the failed factories, benefiting thousand of families. The law gives also a chance for the improvement of the conditions of the cooperatives that already manage autonomously the plants who failed.