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Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Mexican Workers Win Ownership Of Tire Plant With Three-Year Strike

“If the owners don’t want it, let’s run it ourselves.” When a factory closes, the idea of turning it into a worker-owned co-operative sometimes comes up—and usually dies.

The hurdles to buying a plant, even a failing plant, are huge, and once in business, the new worker-owners face all the pressures that helped the company go bankrupt in the first place. Most worker-owned co-ops are small, such as a taxi collective in Madison or a bakery in San Francisco.

But in Mexico a giant-sized worker cooperative has been building tires since 2005. The factory competes on the world market, employs 1,050 co-owners, and pays the best wages and pensions of any Mexican tire plant.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The more the middle men (the profit takers/the money changers) can be removed from any business, the more efficient and productive a business can become. A collective investment of self makes for smart businesses and long term success. Less is more.