The ABC metalworkers' union and his support for cooperatives: A Brazilian experience

This paper presents the results of a survey involving the participation of the ABC Metalworkers' Union (located in São Bernardo, Brazil) which organization of employees into self-managed work through cooperatives. Since 1996, the union has supported the cooperative movement, focusing on troubled companies and state bankruptcy. We analyze this unusual action practiced by the union, supporting the creation of production cooperatives. We strive to understand why it started to motivate the formation of cooperatives among metallurgists who become members, leaving the status of employees and become the ‘working owners’. We searched two groups of workers in different situations: the first one was part of a metallurgical advised by the union which the crisis in the factory was encouraged to create a cooperative to ensure continuity of employment, since the company was in a financial crisis. Despite the union’s encouragement, workers have failed to form a cooperative. The second group is represented by an established and prepared cooperative that emerged with the support of the union after the original company goes bankrupt. Emphasizing the union’s help, workers were able to organize to rebuild the company by self-management, and it is already producing in the market for over five years. The research method consists in analysis of official union’s documents, periodicals, magazines and newspapers, as well as semi-structured formal interviews with trade unionists and workers who were aided by the union to create a cooperative. As a main result, we found this approach aims at the maintenance of union jobs in the region, since this process has begun in a period of an unemployment crisis and the introduction of flexible production in the country, which it has been affected the São Bernardo industrialized region’s in a remarkable procedure.