Workers in control: Venezuela's occupied factories.

• Author: Trigona, Marie
• Position: Labor activist Pablo Cormenzana - Interview

Latin America's occupied factories and enterprises represent the development of one of the most advanced strategies in defense of the working class and resistance against capitalism and neoliberalism. This new phenomenon catching hold throughout Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela continues to grow despite market challenges. More than 30,000 Latin American workers are employed at cooperative-run businesses, which were closed down by bosses and reopened by employees.

In Venezuela alone, it is estimated that 1,200 business and factories have been occupied by their workers after bosses and owners abandoned them. In response to the Bolivarian revolution, many oligarchic and foreign investors have fled Venezuela leaving workers out to dry. Venezuela's working class has stood up to the destiny of unemployment and helped to build a road to socialism: taking over ransacked companies, calling for the nationalization and implementing worker self-management.

Since 2005, the Venezuelan government passed a number of legal decrees expropriating abandoned factories for workers to start up production. Today in Venezuela some 20 companies have been nationalized and function under worker co-management or control.

One such group working to coordinate the grass-roots based worker takeovers in Venezuela has been FRETECO (Co-managed and Occupied Factories' Worker's Revolutionary Front). Workers from the state-worker co-managed industrial valve plant INVEVAL formed FRETECO in 2006 to strategize how the worker occupied factory movement can multiply industry under genuine worker control. FRETECO held a small, but important conference in October where 15 worker co-managed companies (several producing and some still fighting to start up production) gathered to share how worker controlled companies are moving away from capitalism and challenges they must face.

Pablo Cormenzana representative from FRETECO and INVEVAL traveled to Buenos Aires in November as part of the Hands Off Venezuela campaign. I caught him before a talk at the BAUEN hotel, a recuperated enterprise and worker run cooperative in the very heart of the city.

M.T.: What happened at INVEVAL that pushed the workers to take over their workplace?

P.C.: INVEVAL started when the owner shut down production in the plant which was formerly called CNV (National Valve Manufacturer) in 2002. The owner of CNV, Sosa Pietri, was part of Venezuela's oligarchy. He decided to extend a management lock out and closed...