Entering the IMPA factory, I realise why it is particularly appreciated by directors and photographers. There is something magic about the place. It is not just the rays of light coming through the windows, but the dozens of machines, originally used to transform aluminium, that occupy all three floors of the factory. They seem to have a story to tell. It is also curious how such a large surface is only occupied by 60 workers.
Finding the Best Status
Industrias Metalúrgicas y Plásticas Argentina (IMPA) is one of the principal recuperated businesses in Argentina. Famous for its role in the development of the National Recuperated Businesses Movement (MNER), it is now the second aluminium business in the country. It is one of the rare factories to operate the complete chain of actions in the aluminium process. Since its creation in 1918, the company has been through many different administrative appellations. Originally funded by German investors, IMPA had three factories in the Buenos Aires neighbourhoods of Quilmes, Almagro and Ciudadela. In 1948 the company was nationalised by joining DINIE, a group of industrial factories run by the state.
In 1961, President Frondizi’s economic policies were particularly profitable to a number of industries in Argentina. Petrochemical and metalworking factories particularly enjoyed this economic atmosphere. Given the favourable situation, the company chose to play the cooperative card. The new organisation would allow all workers to be on the same hierarchical level and permit them to better manage the factory and equally share its profits.
The reorganisation was easily done in the smaller structures of Quilmes and Ciudadela. However, the Almagro factory with its 400 workers was a harder business to deal with. There, 43 workers formed a commission to manage the company. The new entity was far from representing everyone in the factory and the management was much more in step with that of a regular company. On the business side of things, the firm was doing well. IMPA was the country’s leader in aluminium, and was at the head of its industry chamber in Argentina. Consequently, the number of workers kept rising.
Struggle for Representation Against Neo-Liberalism
While the company was growing, one problem remained. Power was still concentrated around a small percentage of workers when every single worker should have been involved. In 1982, the workers, who had reached 700 in number, protested to change the council conditions and asked for everyone’s participation. Unfortunately, work unions paid little attention to the protest and the decisions continued to be made by a small group of workers.
Marcelo Castillo, who joined the company 30 years ago, recalls: “When I came to work for IMPA, I had no idea about what a cooperative was. Little by little, I realised I had the chance to have my say in the company management but I had to wait a while before being able to do it.”
Soon enough, the compañeros were challenged. From the start of his time in power, in 1989 President Carlos Menem started a large process of privatisation and encouraged imports by lowering custom taxes. Combined with the pegging of the Argentine peso to the dollar, many Argentine industries struggled to compete with foreign markets. IMPA, which was producing bicycles in a large quantity, could not reach the Chinese price when bicycles came on the Argentine market from the other side of the world.
Like many other companies, the aluminium factory entered an era of heavy debt which quickly converted into staff reductions and the dismantling of machines. The company’s health had a strong influence on the workers’ salaries and people started to fear the effect it could have on their pensions. The debt rose to $6m of which a part was to be paid every six months. “We were barely earning two pesos a week,” remembers Marcelo.
The creditors quickly managed to leave the factory without electricity, gas or water.
How to Survive?
To survive, IMPA had to diversify its activities and get more and more people involved within its structure. While the workers already had their own medical centre, they decided to dedicate a part of their factory to education with the creation of a secondary school in 2001. Education is free and aims to expand knowledge about cooperatives.
A private loan made by one of the workers allowed the courageous group to buy a generator and a one ton of raw material to get production going again.
Needing to spread the word about their cause and create more income for the factory, a few workers decided to start a cultural centre in 2002. “The company needed a kind of protection which would give it some importance in the neighbourhood and help us to get the favours of the government,” explains Sonia, who coordinates cultural activities in the factory with two of her workmates, Fernando and Naty.
Business Wolves Still Lie in Wait
But after the economic crash of 2001/2, the country was paralysed, and the workers say the concept of a worker-run factory was not a popular one for many people. The death of IMPA would have meant that the cooperative model would not expand to other companies, and profiteers could have sold the building in Almagro, which had important land value.
In 2005, Luis Caro, a lawyer at the head of the Recuperated Factory Movement (MFR) tried to get involved in the cooperative. The workers say how the MFR looks to privatise cooperatives by favouring the installation of a leading council and avoiding cultural activities and the opening of the enterprise to the community. On 14th April, the lawyer broke into the factory with a group of 20 dissident IMPA workers. Outside, the 130 remaining workers, led by head of MNER, Eduardo Murúa, tried desperately to enter their workplace while being repressed by the police.
Sonia was on the street at the time: “We were all shouting hoping for a meeting to happen. When suddenly the 50 policemen started to spray a blue liquid on us, shoot us with rubber bullets and fire tear gas everywhere. The police then searched for workers covered of this liquid for a 15 blocks radius. As a result, 19 people including three women were locked up for seven hours.”
In 2006, Luis Caro entered the cooperative administration by joining a group of investors trying again to sell the factory, but he never got the majority to rally his cause.
A New Hope
A few months later, three of the workers went to meet the creditors to pay $4m back. Their show of good will pushed the government to give the company a temporary expropriation, meaning that the state bought the factory to allow the workers to reoccupy it under a new name: ‘22 de mayo’, the date of one of their biggest protests. Unfortunately, at the start of 2009, Judge Victor Hugo Vitale ruled against IMPA by declaring the law was illegal, even though it was dictated by the government. The case is now going into appeal and IMPA supporters are not too worried.
“I feel really confident when it comes to the aftermath of this story, the government will surely support us, since they issued the law, and a lot of communities are with us. Mr Vitale is alone against everyone,” says Marcelo.
And for now it is business as usual, with many projects planned for 2010, the biggest being the expansion of the secondary school and expanding it into a university. The new entity will add languages and maths to its teaching and also train on health and safety. The cultural centre which already offers around 15 workshops, from theatre to clown classes, and is always looking for adding more events to its agenda.
Oscar, one of IMPA’s neighbours, voices the barrio’s approval of the recuperated factory: “IMPA has always been an important source of work for the neighbourhood. Now, with the cultural centre and the secondary school they manage to fulfil an essential function for the people of Almagro.”
IMPA is located at Querandíes 4290 in Almagro. For more information about the cultural centre visit www.impalafabrica.org or impafabrica.blogspot.com