The factories of the people
Por translation-mark - Thursday, Aug. 26, 2004 at 5:09 PM

Sunday 22 of August 2004 | EVICTION IN GATIC, THREATS IN ZANON On August 12th a brutal operation carried out by 200 police from Buenos Aires province, and under the command of the commissioner Julio Ducid and ordered by the commercial judge (juez comercial) Miguel Gutiérrez Hair, evicted 100 workers of the Gatic plant in the Pigüé area, to the south of Buenos Aires province. The Gatic installations, a business emptied and broken with fraud by the businessman Bakchelián, were occupied months ago by their workers who are fighting for the business to be ´recuperated´ under self-management, with the support of the National Movement of Recuperated Businesses (Movimiento Nacional de Empresas Recuperadas or MNER) and the community of Pigüé (included their mayor and the council body). The police were dispatched from other parts of the province, from where they left three days before and they entered the plant by force using gases, sticks and rubber bullets, in an operation that was already planned before the eviction order.

In the meantime in Zanon, the ceramic factory recuperated in Neuquén, a plan of struggle was discussed to respond to the new threats of eviction. The plan began with a mobilization of 5000 persons through the streets of the city. The judge of the case of Zanon, German Páez Castañeda, has set the dates for the finalización of the process for creditors, without recognizing the cooperative that has been created by the workers. This opens the doors for banks or private capital private to try to put an end to the worker-controlled management that Zanon has enjoyed for almost 3 years. Management that gives work to 400 people (170 more than at the beginning) who gain an average of 1000 pesos each per month. What´s more, the government of Neuquén presented itself for the first time in the case, with a written presentation stating that the workers of Zanon must leave the plant so that its "legitimate owners" may return, and that the government will finance the workers with micro-enterprises.

After the mobilization and a gathering in Neuquén to discuss the next steps on the provincial level, the workers of Zanon called a meeting in Buenos Aires which was carried out last Friday in the Bauen hotel and which saw the participation of scores of piquetero organizations, unions, human rights agencies and workers from all over the country. In the meeting it was agreed for the worker-management of Zanon to be defended and to renounce the threats of eviction, to demand the recognition of the cooperative on the part of the Judge and other authorities, for the expropriation of Zanon and for a National Law of Definitive Expropriation (Ley Nacional de Expropiación Definitiva ) for all the factories recuperated by their workers, for support to the workers of Gatic in Pigüé and recognition of the cooperative of the workers in all the plants their. For Friday 10th of September a mobilization in Buenos Aires was called to demand that the judge recognise the cooperative, and that the National Congress pass forward a national law of definitve expropriation for all the businesses in process of being recuperated.

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