Ryan Merz, University of Iowa
“Institutionalization of the Recovered Factory Repertoire: Worker Strategies at Talleras Union”
Bio: Ryan Merz grew up in the outskirts of Maple Plain, Minnesota as the son of a social worker. He will be completing his Bachelor of Science in Sociology at The University of Iowa this year. As a community organizer, Ryan has been active in peace, labor, housing, and gender issues. During the spring and summer of 2008 he lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he conducted the research he will be presenting. He currently serves as Director of Finance and Development for the River City Housing Collective.
Abstract: This paper uses participant observation to follow a group of Argentine workers who are attempting to take over their bankrupt bookbinding factory and restart production as a worker cooperative. It looks at how government policy and the help of non-governmental organizations are interpreted by the workers and in-turn affect the worker’s strategy. It also places the takeover in a broader social movement (the recovered factory movement) that occurred in response to a 2001 economic crisis in Argentina. The paper looks at how the worker takeover in question differs from earlier takeovers and uses changes in Political Opportunity Structures, economic conditions, and internal movement organization to explain these differences. It arrives at the conclusion that strategy institutionalization is a movement coping mechanism for closure of certain aspects of the political environment.
This project contributes to the field of human development studies in that it examines how workers were actively able to combat an economic system threatening to their welfare. It also looks at why this economic system was threatening and how Argentine government policies both aided and restricted their ability to reclaim their right to work.
