Worker Cooperatives in Brazil

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2020s

2010s

2000s

1990s

Cooperativa Uruven

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Cooperativa Uruven is a worker-owned tannery in Montevideo, Uruguay.  It operated from the 1970s until a series of operational and export market factors caused it to close in 1997. The plant was “productively occupied” by its workers with support from the tannery workers union and operated as a self-managed enterprise. Maximally the company had 800 workers and 230 occupied it, but in 2008 there were only 60 workers, and by 2013 there were 30. The equipment was old, and operations were disrupted in 2001 when the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak created a supply chain crisis. The cooperative has largely done per-façon piecework for other tanneries when there has been demand.

Uruven formally became a cooperative in 2005 as they received a large investment from the Venezuelan government alongside two other cooperatives, Cristalería del Uruguay and Funsa. The investment supported Uruven to buy their factory, and get out of a conflictive relationship with their landlord. In exchange Uruven offered technical assistance to the Venezuelan tannery sector. After the national cooperative development fund Fondes was created in 2011, the cooperative received capital to update their effluent plant, which allowed them to increase production.

2020s

2010s 

2000s

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Cooperativa Américo Caorsi de Tacuarembó

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Cooperativa Américo Caorsi de Tacuarembó is a worker-owned noodle factory with around 25 members in Tacuarembó, Uruguay, about 5 hours from Montevideo. The cooperative was formed in 1964, after a fire burned and shut down a bakery. 100 workers were out of work for several years before 80 of them founded the cooperative. The product line was reduced from several bakery lines to a focus on noodles. The organizing effort helped to launch the Federación de Cooperativas de Producción del Uruguay in 1962, and is reported as the oldest empresa recuperada in Uruguay.  

In the 2000s the cooperative ran into financial troubles, and came close to liquidating, but was rescued when the local government bought their building at auction in order to keep the cooperative operating. The cooperative has had issues getting the capital needed to modernize, and the burden of debt when they do. A loan from the state-owned bank BROU required board members to give personal guarantees, making board seats undesirable.  To mitigate government debt, the cooperative contracted with regional state-owned prisons to provide them with dry pasta. 

2020s

2010s

2000s

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Worker Cooperatives in Uruguay

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2020s

2010s

2000s

Worker Cooperatives in Cuba

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2020 to the present

2016 – 2019: growth and revision

2013 – 2015: early development

2012: the new law

Before 2012

Andrés Ruggeri

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2020 to the present

2010 – 2019

2000 – 2009

Worker Cooperatives in Venezuela

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2024

2013

2008

2006

Coopérative de solidarité de Pikogan

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The Coopérative de solidarité de Pikogan, founded in 2009, is worker-owned cooperative in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, in the northwest of Quebec. The cooperative has around 90 workers and is affiliated with the Abitibiwinni First Nation, which has a population of around 1,000.  

The cooperative’s origin is intertwined with other cooperatives and community ownership efforts. In the 1970s a union-led effort to save a shuttered paper mill launched Tembec, a partnership of workers, government, and entrepreneurs. In 2003 Tembec asked two forestry cooperatives – the Coopérative forestière du Nord-Ouest (CFNO) and the Coopérative de travailleurs sylvicoles Abifor – to form a partnership to provide them with timber. Two years later the Abitibiwinni First Nation joined the partnership, and when CFNO pulled out in 2009 the Coopérative de solidarité de Pikogan was formed by the tribe to replace them.      

Changes in the industry continued. CNFO closed in 2014.  In 2017 The Tembec mill was acquired by a U.S. company and then shut down. The Coopérative de solidarité de Pikogan has since diversified from timber and began to provide labor to a drilling company and lithium mining complex.

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Coopérative forestière de la Gaspésie

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The Coopérative forestière de la Gaspésie was formed in 2013, as the merger of three smaller forestry cooperatives.  The merger came in response to a new regulatory regime and allowed the local companies to reach a scale to compete for contracts with outside firms.  In 2020 there were around 140 workers, more than 100 of them members.      

The smaller cooperatives that merged included 

  • Coopérative forestière New Richmond Saint-Alphonse, which itself had been created in the 1960s as the merger of three 1940s-era cooperatives: New Richmond, Saint-Alphonse, and Saint-Edgar
  • Coopérative d’aménagement de la Baie-des-Chaleurs, which was formed in 1984 and had 154 workers in 2010.   
  • Coopérative de travail en aménagement forestier des MRC Côte-de-Gaspé et Rocher-Percé 

The cooperative is also a member of the Association coopérative forestière régionale de la Gaspésie, an affiliated group of eight worker- and solidarity- cooperatives

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Coopérative forestière Ferland-Boilleau

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The Coopérative forestière de Ferland-Boilleau in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec was founded in 1963 as the Syndicat Forestier Ferland-Boilleau, after 30 families lost their logging concession to a large company. The group changed their name from syndicat to chantier in the 1970s, and then to cooperative in the 1980s. The cooperative has around 120 workers, 90 of which are members.     

Starting in the 80s the group diversified their activities. They produced saplings for reforestation – and even experimented with growing tomatoes for a few years. They have made investments in several regional partners and subsidiaries, investing in the Lignarex mill in La Baie in 2012 and then acquiring 75% of the Lignarex Group in 2018.  In 2013 they launched a distillery to make essential oils from wood products, as well as supplying dried plants for a KM12 gin.  In 2015 they formed a partnership with another company to produce wood pellets, and in 2024 the cooperative bought a sawmill in Lac-Saint-Jean. 

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