ILPC 2026

 Cooperatives are a particular form of organization with a dual character, because they are companies that must perform with the parameters of capitalism economic activity, efficiently managing the set of resources that make up the organization, seeking positive economic results, and surviving in a competitive market. At the same time, they are organizations that are structured around the collective property, the participation and democratic control.

In the last fifteen years in Argentina, worker cooperatives were established and it is estimated that this number amounts more than 15,000. Those that were recovery companies by their workers since the year 2000´, represent about 370, with an important symbolic weight. This intense growth in a short period of time occurred without systematization and with primacy over the production of goods and services, without mediating the formation and generation of organizational and technical capacities for the development of the economic and institutional management of each cooperative entity.

In this framework we may affirm that these work cooperatives have no policies that consider their specificities of this form of management in relation to labor regulations and the management of associated workers. On the one hand, because of the vacuum in these thematic areas that historically existed in the small and medium companies and from which many worker cooperatives came. On the other hand, many of these cooperatives were formed on emergencies that did not allow a process of reflection, training and learning on the subject. And the most relevant in the framework of economic and social theory linked to cooperativism did not develop a theoretical corpus of its own around these thematic areas.

 As we enter the world of cooperatives, we see common problems related to labor management, such as decision-making, the integration of young workers into cooperatives, the reproduction of disciplinary devices, internal socialization processes and income from cooperatives. new associates, the processes of elaboration and agreement of internal regulations; the technical and institutional development of the members of the cooperatives, the internal regulations in the commitment of the work, etc. 

This paper aims to survey and investigate around the different forms of work management, labor regulations and the development policies of the associated workers in the worker cooperatives. More than 20 in-depth interviews were carried out in recuperated companies and work cooperatives of more than 20 workers / associates. From the analysis of the them, different work management devices and labor regulations were identified, which through democratic and collective instances allow to propose alternatives to the capitalist production process.