Uruguay – Worker Cooperatives in the Americas

Worker Cooperatives in Uruguay

2020s

Dean – Worker takeovers: a comparative analysis of employee buyouts, other worker-managed firms, and conventional firms in Uruguay (2024)
Rieiro y Reyes – Las empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores en Uruguay: emergencia, desarrollo, debilitamiento y singularidades del caso (2023)
Martí – Antecedentes de estudios sobre la historia del cooperativismo en Uruguay (2023)

2010s

2000s

Cooperativa Uruven

Cooperativa Uruven was a worker-owned tannery in Montevideo, Uruguay. The legacy company was founded in the the 1970s and operated until a series of operational and market challenges caused it to close in 1997. Threatened with job loss, the tannery was “productively occupied” by its workers, and run as a self-managed enterprise, with support from the tannery workers union. At peak the the factory had 800 workers. 230 participated in the occupation.

Though the occupation succeeded, the equipment was old, and business was significantly disrupted in 2001 when foot-and-mouth disease caused a supply chain crisis. The cooperative mostly subcontracted per-façon piecework for other tanneries when there was extra demand. By 2008 there were only 60 workers, and by 2013 just 30.

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Cooperativa Américo Caorsi de Tacuarembó

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 shut down a large bakery. 100 bakery workers were unemployed for several years before 80 of them founded the cooperative.

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 they were rescued by local government, which bought their building at auction.

The cooperative has had issues getting money to modernize, and paying it back. A loan from the state-owned bank BROU required board members to give personal guarantees – trapping some workers in perpetual board seats since no one wanted to replace them with their own guarantee. At on point the cooperative negotiated to pay off some of the debt by supplying state-owned prisons with their dry pasta products.

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