Tag: Argentina

The Cooperativa de Trabajo Textiles Pigüé is one of the largest of the empresas recuperadas organized in Argentina in the early 2000s. The former company rose as a national economic anchor in the 1980s, producing for brands like Adidas, and providing jobs to small towns like Pigüé, six hours outside of Buenos Aires. But as trade rules loosened in the 1990s the company became inconsistent in paying wages. They filed for creditor protections in 2001 and then ceased production in 2003. 

93 workers occupied the factory and kept the machines running for almost a year as they organized their legal challenge. In 2004 they were evicted by 300 police officers, but a few months later the government reversed course and allowed them back in. For years the founders worked with little pay to build back operations, but by 2024 they had doubled in size to 180 workers. The story of their first 10 years is detailed in the 2014 book Cooperativa Textiles Pigüé: historia de la recuperación de una fábrica de Gatic.