Interview with Raul Godoy, worker and union activist at the Zanon Factory.

Raul Godoy (born 1965) works on the varnishing line in the ceramics factory Zanon in the Patagonian city of Neuquén in Argentina. He is also vice president of the Union of Ceramics Workers of Neuquén (SOECN). He played a leading role in the workers’ struggle at Zanon in 2001-02 which ended in the occupation of the factory by the workers. Since 2002, the Zanon workers have been producing under workers’ control and have renamed their business FaSinPat (“Fábrica Sin Patrones” – factory without bosses).

WF: Zanon is known in many parts of the world because the Zanon workers have been producing under workers’ control since 2002. Can you say a little about the factory?

Zanon is the largest and the most advanced ceramics factory on the continent. We mostly produce ceramic tiles, and these are exported to more than 25 countries. As many as 1,500 people could work here. Currently, 470 workers keep the factory running.

What was the factory like until 2001? Had there already been a special tradition of struggle?

In Zanon there was virtually no tradition of struggle. The factory was opened in 1980, i.e. under the military dictatorship, and from the beginning there was iron control over work discipline. After the fall of the dictatorship a union was organised, but it was controlled by the trade union bureaucracy. The union leaders always had agreements with the company: if the owner Luigi Zanon wanted to fire five workers, he would announce 20 layoffs so that this union could “save” 15 jobs. Later, when we had occupied the factory, there were several eviction attempts by scabs and thugs – in their ranks we saw these union bureaucrats!

What were the first steps in the workers’ struggle in 2001/02?

In 2001, a situation that had been developing for years finally exploded. In our case, we took over the Internal Commission [roughly comparable to a shop stewards’ committee – PR] in 1998, taking it out of the hands of the union bureaucracy. Because we hadn’t been able to meet publicly, we had organised soccer games on the weekends to win over our colleagues for an opposition list for the commission.

The Internal Commission, was able to put a brake on firings and suspensions, and we participated in the general strikes that were called by the trade union federations. But in these protests, we had our own programme that was different from that of the bureaucratic apparata. In 2000, we also took over the then the local ceramics workers’ union, SOECN.

And you’re now the union president?

I held that position for several years. But we have adopted a very democratic constitution for our union which stipulates that all functionaries receive an average workers’ wage and that all functions are rotated periodically. So now another colleague is the president and I am the vice president.

It was the death of a Zanon worker that brought a qualitative leap in the workers’ willingness to fight. Can you say something about him?

Daniel Ferra, a worker in the factory, died on July 16, 2000 in the arms of a workers’ delegate. He died because medical equipment required by law was not available in the factory. This event triggered the first “wildcat” strike, which we led as the newly elected union leadership. During this “strike of nine days,” we blocked the factory for nine days with tents and pickets outside the gate. At this time, the Women’s Commission was born and there were also the first road blockades. We had the backing of nearly 100% of the workforce. It was the first time in the history of the factory that a strike of this magnitude took place; it was the first time that the workers acted as a unit. This was the real beginning of the process, because this is when the workers realised that in the eyes of the company we are only numbers.

Years later, when the factory was put under workers’ self-management, we called Daniel’s mother, and she still works with us today. Daniel had financially supported his family, especially his mother, because his father and his brothers were unemployed. Daniel was a temporary worker when he died. We fought for the rights of all workers – whether permanently employed or not – and Daniel took part in every strike, in every assembly, in every demonstration, in spite of his precarious status. That is why he is a symbol of our struggle to this day.

How did it finally come to the occupation in 2001?

In 2001 the Argentinean economy exploded, with a brutal fall in the GDP that meant thousands of factory closures and millions of layoffs, and also the expropriation of the savings of thousands of small savers. This provoked some truly revolutionary days that brought down the government of President De la Rúa and created a number of militant movements: Unemployed workers blocked roads (this was the “piquetero” movement), “people’s assemblies” were established in large cities, workers occupied their factories etc. In our case, there was an occupation starting in October 2001 because the highly indebted Luigi Zanon wanted to close the factory and throw almost the entire workforce out onto the street.

How did you move from the factory occupation to production under workers’ control?

It was a very difficult process. Some of us were absolutely convinced of this objective from the beginning. But the majority of workers thought this would be too great a challenge. It meant violating private property and risking police repression and legal prosecution (which occurred in the end).

Our position at that time was to go through this experience and respect the pace at which the majority of our colleagues were willing to proceed. For five months we were in tents outside and inside the factory. But in this time we did not just sit around with our arms crossed. We set up a number of working commissions: a press commission, a solidarity commission including colleagues from various organisations, a security commission which defended the occupation and was later transformed into the factory guards, a women’s commission including workers from the factory as well as wives, mothers and daughters.

This created a spectacular level of workers’ militancy. A number of activists gained experience which later formed the foundation for organising workers’ control. During this strike, we began to sell the stock in the warehouse to get our back pay – and when the warehouse was empty, at the workers’ assembly on March 2, 2002 we decided to resume production.

How has the factory without bosses functioned since then?

From the beginning, it has been based on direct workers’ democracy. The whole workforce is organised in a kind of workers’ council. There is a coordinator for each department, elected by his/her colleagues and with a recallable mandate, and also two or three general coordinators who are elected by the general assembly.

Every month there is an assembly of all the workers which makes all the important decisions: this applies to economic and social questions, questions of production, questions of politics etc. But even mundane things such as the length of our lunch breaks are decided in the assembly. There is full freedom of expression and of tendencies. Resolutions are adopted by a simple majority vote.

How has the union changed in the course of these protests?

In reality, our union’s programme had already become more radical before the crisis. We made our policies, which were clearly based on class struggle, more profound: for unity in the ranks of the working class, for permanent employment for all workers on temporary contracts, for equal pay for equal work etc.

Given the current capitalist crisis, we have again made our programme more profound: we say that the capitalists have to pay for the crisis. If a company claims that it is suffering from the effects of the crisis, we demand the opening of the financial accounts for the last few years to inspection. And if the businessmen say they can’t do that, then we say that they should leave and the workers can start up production under workers’ self-management.

How did the population of Neuquén respond to the occupation?

Very well. The population understood that our struggle was legitimate. We spent months making our struggle known via the different commissions, handing out flyers and bulletins, asking for support for the strike fund and explaining the conflict.

Even more important was that during our struggle we have always raised the demands of all workers and poor people, not just of ourselves, and this helped create a big solidarity movement. We’ve always maintained that the factory belongs to the working-class and poor communities of Neuquén and we’ve made a huge number of donations to hospitals, schools, and homes for homeless people, and this has solidified the alliance with other workers and the whole community.

You collaborated especially with the movement of unemployed workers, the piqueteros. How did this work?

A truly revolutionary alliance was created. It had enormous potential because it united those who are always divided by governments, businessmen and trade union bureaucrats. In Neuquén, we built, on the initiative of the ceramics workers’ union, a Regional Coordination that united the ceramic workers with unemployed people from various piquetero movements, workers in the public health sector, teachers, students and leftist parties. Each time they tried to evict us, there were large mobilisations against it in the city.

This unity meant quite specifically that when we were able to create new jobs at Zanon – the workforce has grown from 271 at the time of the occupation to 470 today – these jobs went to unemployed colleagues from various piquetero movements. Today, these colleagues are working with us as security guards.

Was there also collaboration with the indigenous peoples in the region?

Absolutely. We showed that the relations between workers and the oppressed are not based on the logic of exploitation but rather on social criteria. We respect the rights of the indigenous peoples and we support their demands for recognition and their struggles against the oil companies, etc. When most of the suppliers boycotted us and did not sell us the raw materials we needed to manufacture ceramics, the Mapuche people, via their confederation, approached the factory and put their land and their clay at our disposal so we could continue working. Now we have a line of ceramics products called “Mapuche” and the individual products are named after the most militant Mapuche leaders.

During 2001-02, there were hundreds of occupied businesses in Argentina. What did the Zanon workers do as part of this movement?

We worked continuously for the coordination of every workplace which had been recuperated or was in the middle of a struggle. We traveled the entire country, we visited each business and we organised several large national meetings. But the government tried in its own way to co-opt this emerging movement.

We of Zanon used the slogan: “If they attack one of us, they attack all of us.” We called on all organisations, regardless of differences in evaluations and tactics, to unconditionally defend every occupied business against any kind of eviction or repression, and to fight for a national expropriation law to legalise all the workers’ self-management projects.

In Argentina, there are hardly any occupied businesses left today. Why has Zanon survived while so many other businesses failed?

There are several reasons for this. The government worked very hard to pacify this militant movement. It drip fed its support for occupied businesses, but even then only if they had already been abandoned by their owners. They were supported by organisations who over time adapted to the official, “kirchnerist” [supporters of former President Néstor Kirchner – PR] policy. (Incidentally, this is the same process of co-optation that many piquetero organisations, people’s assemblies, trade unions and even human rights organisations underwent.)

In our case, there was always a militant workers’ self-management based on class independence. Our policy has always been to seek cooperation with other sectors of the working class engaged in struggle. But we knew that no project of workers’ self-management can work well in a country that has millions of workers who are unemployed or earn poverty wages, or in a capitalist market where we have to compete with large corporations which in contrast to us have access to huge amounts of capital. That is why we have always fought for the expropriation of the factory and for nationalisation under workers’ control.

A few weeks ago, the parliament of the province of Neuquén voted for the expropriation of the factory. How did this come about?

On the night of 13 August, parliament voted to expropriate the factory and transfer it to our cooperative FaSinPat [“Fabrica sin Patrones” – factory without bosses]. In the afternoon before the vote, more than 3,000 people demonstrated outside the parliament building. Among them were representatives of militant workers from across the country, for example from the subway in Buenos Aires. Although the Patagonian winds were blowing up to 60 kilometres [40 miles] an hour, hundreds of us held out in front of the parliament until the early morning hours when the result of the vote was announced.

Does this mean your demands were satisfied?

Not quite. The expropriation law stipulates that the province will pay 23 million pesos [about $6m, £3.5m – PR] to the creditors of the former owner. We believe these debts were made by the Zanon family and should not be taken over by the state.

The expropriation is only a partial solution, but it is one that allows us to continue the struggle for our ultimate goal, namely the nationalisation of the factory. At least now there will be no more eviction attempts and legal problems – in the last eight years there have been five attempts to evict us.

We want Zanon to be put definitively at the service of the population. But it is a giant step forward that a capitalist like Luigi Zanon has had his property taken away.

What is your ultimate goal?

We demand nationalisation under workers’ control so that we can run the factory at full capacity and create many new jobs. We need a public works programme, because the province of Neuquén alone needs at least 40,000 new homes. A nationalised ceramics factory could be an important part of the solution to this problem.

You are a Zanon worker and a leading member of the union, but also a member of the Trotskyist “Party of Socialist Workers” (PTS). What role has your party played in this struggle?

I believe that the PTS has played a fundamental role. Many battles in the past have been lost due to a lack of perspective and strategy. It was fundamental that we knew, from historical experience, that we had to introduce a number of key demands into the struggle: the opening of the financial accounts, direct democracy with freedom of tendencies and the occupation and the expropriation of the factory. This not only gave us a concrete programme but also an organisational framework to make our struggle known across the country – in various sectors of the working class and in the universities – and get support for our strike fund. Our workers’ self-management did not spring from thin air – we relied on the experiences of different struggles, both victories and defeats of many generations who have sacrificed their lives over the past 200 years for the cause of the workers.

In recent months we have seen a number of factory occupations in many different countries. Normally, these actions last only a few days or weeks – but there are also cases, especially in France, where the bosses are kidnapped. What lessons does the experience of Zanon offer for these occupations?

It is good news that workers, at the beginning of a new historical crisis of capitalism, are radicalising their methods of struggle, just as the capitalists and the governments are: the ruling classes are radicalising their methods, and that means millions of unemployed, millions of people starving, it means layoffs, suspensions, repression and persecution against those who struggle. The ruling classes are radicalizing their methods in the form of wars and military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq or against the Palestinians. Such phenomena will occur more and more in the coming years.

But we also need to radicalize our alternatives. This means demanding that the capitalists must pay for the crisis in concrete terms: accounts must be opened so that the workers and the public can see what the profits of these companies were like over the last five years. Factories which close or throw hundreds or thousands onto the street must be expropriated and placed at the service of the local population. But this is only a beginning: it is also about the demand for a porogramme of public works to provide housing for homeless families. We need to say “Basta!” [“Enough!”] to the various current government schemes for rescuing companies because they amount to nothing other than guaranteeing the profits of the capitalists.

What is the meaning of the experience of the Zanon workers in the context of the capitalist crisis?

Capitalism is rotting, but it won’t topple itself. It has to be toppled. All it has to offer is more misery and barbarism. The workers and especially those of us who want to fight against the exploitation of man by man have to defend the rights of the workers and the poor population – but more than anything else, we have to present an alternative.

From this point of view, I think that our project of workers’ self-management which has lasted more than eight years is an example of the power of our class. It is a small laboratory that shows what workers are capable of. For years, those in power have told us that we have to resign, or at most fight for crumbs; they have told us we have no alternatives, and they’ve implanted so much scepticism in the movement that many left-wing or radical organisations have curtailed their programmes and their objectives.

This new crisis is an enormous risk because it will have terrible effects on our living conditions. But at the same time it’s a great opportunity for our class to fight for the end of the capitalist system.

When you began the occupation in 2001, surely you didn’t expect to spend eight years inside. What do you expect in the coming years?

Our motto has always been: If we can run a factory, we can also run a country.

These nine years of struggle have confirmed all my militant convictions. In the 15 years that I have worked in this factory, I was able to observe the political development of my colleagues.

At the beginning there was a generalised apathy, a terrible corporatism, an attitude of “save yourself if you can”, an enormous individualism, and above all a lot of scepticism. This mood remained for years because of ongoing attacks by the company, betrayals by the union bureaucracy, etc.

But as soon as the situation changed in the factory, the humour, the courage, the morale changed as well – these very workers, who a short time before seemed like sheep, launched a struggle that to this day has an historic character.

But this didn’t simply result from the dynamic of the struggle: it was necessary that in every assembly and even in every conversation we argued and fought for a revolutionary strategy. At the beginning, the workers did not understand this – they even rejected it explicitly – but in the heat of the crisis and the struggle, this programme and this strategy was accepted fully.

This battalion of workers has turned a programme that has been elaborated by several generations of workers in countless battles into a living reality. But we still have a difficult task ahead of us. Other sectors need to take steps like we have. For this, it is important that our experience is made known more widely.

In my view, above all we need a political leadership of the workers – a real general staff – which can fight for this perspective in Argentina and around the world.

Interview: Wladek Flakin, REVOLUTION Berlin