Workers buyouts from all around the globe to meet at the VI International Gathering of the “The Workers’ Economy” in Argentina

21 April 2017

The VI International Gathering of “The Workers’ Economy” will take place in Argentina between August 30th and September 2nd, 2017. Organisers are inviting all workers from recuperated and self-managed enterprises, cooperatives and social and popular economy organizations, as well as trade unions and academics interested in and committed to self-management practices and the project of a new workers’ economy.

This new, sixth edition of the International Gathering will take place ten years after the first edition was organized by the Programa Facultad Abierta (Open University Program) of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires in July 2007. Subsequent editions have taken place in Buenos Aires (2009), Mexico (2011), Brazil (Joao Pessoa, 2013) and Venezuela (Punto Fijo, 2015). Beginning in 2014, regional gatherings have also been taking place in South America, Europe and the Mediterranean, and in North and Central America, the last of which were held in October and November 2016 with the participation of representatives from 30 countries.

“It will be held in a particular moment when a workers’ economy based on self-management appears to be more and more needed as an alternative to savage capitalism. This is particularly so given that our contemporary capitalist order increasingly condemns the majority of the world’s working people to exploitation, precariousness, and unemployment, while unleashing wars, discrimination and destruction throughout the planet”, says organisers.

In addition to the sessions that will begin on August 30, the VI International Gathering’s local organizing committee is planning activities and visits to social organizations and workers buyouts companies in Buenos Aires one week prior to the gathering. The organizing committee will also guarantee transportation logistics for all participants from the city of Buenos Aires the the city of Pigüé, where most of the gathering will take place and which was already the site of the First South American Regional Gathering of “The Workers’ Economy” in October 2014.

The opening event will be held at the Hotel BAUEN, a workersbuyout experience in the City of Buenos Aires (that is currently facing risk of eviction ordered by the court as well as the Argentine government). The rest of the gathering will continue at the facilities of the Textiles Pigüé Cooperative, a workersbuyout factory in the interior of the province of Buenos Aires.

The schedule of the prior activities will be available in June 2017.

Thematic streams of the VI International Gathering of “The Workers’ Economy” are:

1. Political and economic analysis of the global capitalist crisis
2. Self-management as practice and as alternative project
3. The challenges of unions and other forms of waged workers’ organizations facing global neoliberal capitalism
4. The growing precariousness and informality of work: Exclusion, inclusion or reformulation of the way of working in global capitalism?
5. The workers’ economy and issues relating to gender
6. Articulation and integration of the workers’ economy
7. State and public policies in the workers’ economy
8. Popular education and knowledge building in the workers’ economy

Deadlines for submitting paper proposals and presentations are:

Abstract submission: 16 June 2017
Abstract approval: 2 July 2017

Full presentation or paper submission: 30 July 2017.

Deadlines for the presentation of workshops, books, journals and audiovisual works

Submission: 16 June 2017
Approval: 3 July 2017

More information on the programme, presentation of papers and organization committee here