Self-Management, Cooperatives and Workers'

Control in Mexico: Scope and Limits

 
Robert Patrick Cuninghame
(Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City,
pgcuninghame@yahoo.co.uk )

28th SASE Annual Meeting, UC Berkeley, 23-26 June 2016

Re-embedding the Social: New Modes of Production,

Critical Consumption & Alternative Lifestyles

Cooperatives & Cooperativism in Times of Austerity

Definitions
Self-Management: political and/or techno-economic control
of the productive process?
Cooperatives: “in and against” capitalism or only “in”?
Workers’ control: political, technical and economic control of
the productive process “in and against capitalism”?
Marx’s critique of Utopian Socialism, including
cooperativism of Owen & Fourier, as “peaceful co-existance”
with capitalism rather than “class struggle”
Historical tendency of cooperative movements to be co-opted:
UK Coop Bank & Supermarket, “Third Italy”, Lega Coop in
Renzi govt., also autonomist C.S.O.A. Leon Cavallo in Milan
Counter-tendency: Recovered factories & workplaces,
Argentinian & Latin American movements since 2001,
“Workers Economy” gatherings of researchers & activists
since 2011 in Latin America05/27/2020
& Europe. USA? Asia? Africa? 2
Case Studies
1. Pascual Boing (cooperative since 1985)
2. Euskadi-TRADOC (cooperative since
2005)
3. Uniroyal (cooperative since 2005)
4. Ruta 100 (union-controlled public
transport system until 1995)
5. Zapatista coffee cooperatives (since
1994)

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 Pascual Boing (cooperative since 1985)
 producer of carbonated drinks, started in 1940, entered Mexican market
despite international competitors (Coca Cola & Pepsi).
 labor disputes led to strike in 1982-85
 Won legal right to take over company and manage it as a cooperative.
 profitable business, but lost market share in Mexico, led them to protest
unfair practices that exclude points of sale, look abroad for new markets,
especially in the US
 1980: fourth place in the national soft drinks market.
 March 1982: federal government decreed all workers, including private
companies, should receive wage increases of between 10% and 30% due
to the devaluation of the peso.
 Workers self-organized in protest, 150 sacked, strike on 18 May 1982.
 31 May: CTM shock group attacked workers, two strikers killed, 17
wounded.
 Owner charged with murder, never brought to trial.
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formal
 committee for legal recognition and public support.
1983, courts ruled in favor of workers in their litigation

1984 workers met with the President de la Madrid.

Company declared bankrupt and tried to sell the facilities.

workers and federal authorities agreement for strikers to take charge of company,

facilities and brands.
Pascual Workers Cooperative Society SCL formed on May 27, 1985.

new co-owners needed 18 million pesos to restart operations.

hundreds of artists and intellectuals supported by donating works of art for auction.

STUNAM provided the funds necessary to obtain permits and machinery

internal struggles on how to organize and operate the company.

cooperative operation began on November 27, 1985 with workers receiving their first

profit-sharing in May 1986.
Previous owner lost the legal right to use the name of Pascual Boing, but used it in a

plant in Aguascalientes
land on which the original factories built did not belong to the original company, but to

the owner's wife
allowed to sue the cooperative in 1989 and won the case in 2003, with the court ordering

Pascual to vacate the terrain.
Then PRD Head of Government of Mexico City Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador

expropriated the land & returned it to Pascual Boing

     
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 2005, Supreme Court ruled expropriation illegal as not benefit the people
but a private company producing a non-essential product
 although Pascual Boing not considered as a private enterprise for profit.
 Workers sought control of land as a social function and, as such,
expropriation in their favor was for public benefit.
 new processing plants in 1992, 2003 and 2006.
 Despite growth, cooperative deny claims in right-wing media it was on
the verge of bankruptcy
 Today, Pascual Boing only major Mexican soft drink company fully
owned, employing more than 5,000 people, generating over 22,000
indirect jobs.
 mission of the cooperative: demonstrate workers can operate well a
cooperative.
 The organization of the cooperative: General Assembly of the founders
and other partners, which controls several boards including Corporate
Investment, Administration and Cultural Foundation.
 4 committees: education, social perspective, arbitration and technical
control.

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claims to have a strong sense of social responsibility,
recognized as a "clean industry" by the Secretary of
Labor
victory only partial as the law on cooperatives does
not allow new recruits to join the cooperative.
original members have become a managerial elite
relatively privileged compared to other workers who
earn less
establishment of new cooperatives restriction,
began with back paid money after strike.
Mexican Labour law: became more limited.
Article 48 of the amended Federal Labor Act 2012,
restricts the repayment of lost wages to 12 months and
to 2% of lost wages for each further year of strike.
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 Conclusion: THE LIMITATIONS OF THE COOPERATIVE
MOVEMENT AND ECONOMIC SELF-MANAGEMENT AS
FORMS OF WORKERS CONTROL IN MEXICO
1. cooperative movement very active in Mexico although economic, rather
than political form of self-management tends to predominate
2. lends itself finally to be used by social “progressive” capitalism that
makes a bridge between the public and the private to impose
precariousness and austerity under cover of a mutualism in reality long
abandoned
3. limitations of cooperatives as a form of workers control in the twenty-
first century and after seven years of one of the worst economic crises in
the history of capitalism.
4. 3 "Recovered Enterprises", TRADOC-Euskadi, Uniroyal and Pascual-
Boing, have become cooperatives, main examples of urban workers
control in Mexico, but with several problems and constraints.

GDF 05/27/2020 8
5. Progressive neoliberal GDF of the PRD promoted until 2012, the
formation of small & medium cooperatives in the name of "economic
solidarity", under the neoliberal model of micro, small and medium-
sized business start-ups.
6. despite their social origins, have become capitalist for-profit enterprises,
fully integrated in the market to extent that have abandoned the
mutualist model of the cooperative movement for the post-Fordist Third
Italy-neoliberal model of the cooperative movement now adapted to the
demands of neo-capitalism in its phase of exacerbated crisis.
7. Laura Collín (2014): “Cooperatives are integral to capitalism, as they
work within the logic of the expanded reproduction of capital, as well as
production for the market, therefore I maintain that they are at the core
of capitalism, instead of private ownership of the means of production,
as stated by orthodox Marxism”.
8. cooperatives controlled by workers today can be an alternative model to
the informal economy for survival against the protracted crisis of
neoliberalism
9. do not necessarily provide a model for anti - capitalist resistance.

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