Information about the Speakers

1. Carlos Alberto Barra from the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados (MTD- Unemployed Worker Movement) Allen, Rio Negro, South Argentina.

   MTD Allen is a movement of unemployed workers that uses direct action street blockades to demand everything from government reforms to food. They attempt to live outside of capitalism, producing everything possible themselves in workshops like an organic farm, chicken and rabbit hatcheries, a community kitchen, a hair cuttery, and a canned foods group. The MTD Allen maintains a collective space for meetings, popular education, productive workshops, and collective meals. Through the Coordination of Autonomous Organizations MTD Allen works with other unemployed movements who share similar goals, like MTD Cipolletti, MTD Solano, and MTD Guernica.
   
   Contact them by email (English or Spanish): micscab[at]yahoo.com.ar or mtdsrionegro[at]neunet.com.ar

2. Eulalia Alicia Perez from the CUC (United Cooperative of Shoe-Makers) Ex-Adidas Factory

   United Cooperative of Shoe-Makers (la CUC) is one of the most important shoe and sports companies in the whole country. This factory, which was called Gatic, once made shoes for ADIDAS and made shoes and sports clothes for the National Soccer Team. In the factory’s most productive period there were more than 20 production plants and more than 7,200 workers.

   At the end of 2001, a new director of the company decided to fire all the workers at the main plant and ran off with the machines. The workers answered (with the help of family, neighbors, and student) by setting up a tent outside the factory “resisting” and “staying the long haul” for almost a year in the street. At the end of the year, they re-opened the plant and the workers returned to work. In September of 2003, the workers again began to lose pay, and tired of the same old history, on October 17th, they decided to take over the plant. They formed the Cooperative of United Shoe-makers and on December 22 they won the expropriation.
   
   Contact them by email: aliciacuc[at]yahoo.com.ar



3. Elsa Montero from the Clinica Fenix (x-IMECC):

   IMECC is a worker-run clinic of 54 doctors, nurses, technicians, biochemists, nutritionists, cooks, housekeeping, and other specialists. In June of 2003 the clinic had shut down; it had been a long process, where salaries were cut over and over again and eventually the owners just stopped showing up. Elsa says, “they owed me over a year and a half of salary”.

   Instead of losing their jobs and becoming part of the growing number of unemployed in Argentina, workers at the factory decided to return to the machines lying vacant in the clinic and open the doors to patients. They began by going to the government to demand expropriation, but when the talks failed they took the factory, defending it in shifts throughout the day and with help with other occupied factories. Today, IMEC is a shining example of workers like doctors, nurses and janitors that together run a democratic clinic.
   
   Contact them by email at: IMECC[at]speedy.com.ar

4. Noelia Lecerfs from Hotel Bauen:*

   Hotel Bauen is a 4 star hotel, well placed in downtown Buenos Aires of 120 workers. In March of 2003, the workers took over the installations of the hotel in order to maintain their source of work. It has been a very difficult struggle in the last year and a half. In one year they were able to quadruple the number of workers, make the hotel function, which has now become a meeting space for many social movements and at the same time a cultural center.

   Winning the expropriation of the hotel is expected soon. The hotel has almost been evicted many times. With the threat of evictions imminent, the workers maintain a permanent assembly. Hotel Bauen has a very impressive system of making democratic decisions which still managing to run a 24 hour hotel.

*Speaker has been invited and is in the process of applying for visa.