Factory seized by workers

[Mike11]

Rummaging through 4AynRandFans in the slim hopes of finding something worth reading and stumbled upon this post by a user named Leperkahn -

There was a factory, like any factor this factory involved skilled workers to run this factory. The owner of the factory faced difficult times in which taxes were increased on his factory, making it a seemingly worthless endeavor. As a result the factory owner left, along with the managment. Leaving hundreds of employees without a job and the factory, which was still fully equiped, idle. The factory workers, not wanting to be without jobs, decided take over the factory and since each had skills in every area the factory ran smoothly. None of the workers was considered the boss or above any other, all had equal pay (with the exception of hazardous jobs). Since the factory became functional, the owner showed up to take back the factory, and all the factory assets.

I'm not sure where I stand on this issue, though it is further to the left than center.

What are the issues at work in this scenario, what are the ethics at play here?

Edited December 4, 2010 by Joel Mac Donald

[Brant Gaede]

Rummaging through 4AynRandFans in the slim hopes of finding something worth reading and stumbled upon this post by a user named Leperkahn -

There was a factory, like any factor this factory involved skilled workers to run this factory. The owner of the factory faced difficult times in which taxes were increased on his factory, making it a seemingly worthless endeavor. As a result the factory owner left, along with the managment. Leaving hundreds of employees without a job and the factory, which was still fully equiped, idle. The factory workers, not wanting to be without jobs, decided take over the factory and since each had skills in every area the factory ran smoothly. None of the workers was considered the boss or above any other, all had equal pay (with the exception of hazardous jobs). Since the factory became functional, the owner showed up to take back the factory, and all the factory assets.

I'm not sure where I stand on this issue, though it is further to the left than center.

What are the issues at work in this scenario, what are the ethics at play here?

It's either beyond or before evaluation.

--Brant

[Starbuckle]

The first ethical issue at play here is the falseness of the report, at least as vaguely supplied. With the workers presumably obliged to deal with the new massive tax burden as well, are we to understand that the only bottleneck to success is the burden of managerial and executive decision-making, from which the workers are now liberated (with the non-trivial exception of the decision made by somebody mandating equal pay for all but those who deal with hazards)?

Any factory or enterprise can be mis-managed. But does that mean no management at all is necessary and that egalitarianism suddenly becomes viable? If that were the case in general, firms that lack any means of executive decision making would enjoy a competitive edge over other firms. Steve Jobs's return to Apple could have made little difference to that company's fate; by all accounts, of course, he turned the firm around.

What is the name of this factory? Where and when did the incident take place? Can we get a link to a fuller report that might fill in some of the missing details and answer some of the obvious questions?

Abstracting away from all the alleged circumstances, the issue of whether a factory owner can reclaim a factory that he has abandoned depends on whether he has, in fact, abandoned it in the eyes of the law. Did he sign it over to the workers?

The issue also arises with respect to any abandoned property. If, by all reasonable criteria, the property has been truly abandoned, the former owner cannot come along later to reclaim it, if, say, the item has been nicely rehabilitated by a later owner.

Edited December 4, 2010 by Starbuckle

[Mike11]

Sorry, I should have posted a link -

http://forums.4aynrandfans.com/index.php?showtopic=11036

[BaalChatzaf]

What are the issues at work in this scenario, what are the ethics at play here?

One might study the statute and case law regarding the abandonment of property. The common law is somewhat like this: if the owner abandons the property, i.e. no long oversees, supervises, disposes of or maintains it for a period of time, he is no longer its owner. The failure to pay taxes is grounds for seizure.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Sorry, I should have posted a link -

http://forums.4aynra...showtopic=11036

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/Occupy_Resist_Argentina.html

"Occupying, Resisting, Producing"

Argentine Workers Take Over Abandoned Factories

by Andres Gaudin****

Dollars and Sense magazine, March/April 2004

[Translated from Spanish by Alejandro Reuss]

It started timidly at first, in the mid-1990s, with workers occupying factories abandoned by their owners and getting them up and running again. But the phenomenon took off in December 2001, when the Argentinean economic crisis hit and massive street protests forced the country's president, Fernando de la Rua, from office. A decade of neoliberal policies had culminated in four years of recession, leaving thousands of domestically owned small and medium-sized businesses struggling or abandoned. Since 2001, in the face of growing unemployment and the state's failure to foresee or address the crisis, thousands of workers have restarted abandoned factories themselves. By taking over plant and equipment, these workers have put the right to work above employers' property rights, and have made some think that Argentina is at the beginning of a revolutionary process. While that is probably not the case, the takeovers do represent a remarkable form of action by Argentinean workers under conditions of harsh economic crisis.

"We are a new social actor; we're creating a new consensus," reads the constitution of the National Movement of Recovered Enterprises (known by its Spanish initials, MNER).

In the face of the failure of company management, we felt we had to replace individual effort with collective effort, as the crisis demanded. By raising the flag of self-management, we were able to go from a situation of social conflict to a productive consensus. In l955, we [workers] had a 51 % share of the national income; now we get just 17%. We're using forms of democratic organization like workers' cooperatives to fight for a more just distribution.

With this declaration, the workers have given preliminary answers to the major questions about the country's economic future: How should income and wealth be distributed? How should workers organize themselves at the worksite and in the larger society? And how should industry itself be organized?"

****Andres Caudin is an Uruguayan journalist based in Argentina, a correspondent of LatinAmerica Press and other publications, and an advisor on international issues to the Socialist Party legislative caucus.

This also happened in South Africa > see http://www.zcommunications.org/south-african-workers-occupy-abandoned-factory-by-many-authors

[Kimmler]

Factory seized by workers? Right on comrades! They are just taking back what is rightfully theirs.

Up the workers.

They will probably run it better than the John Galts...

[BaalChatzaf]

Factory seized by workers? Right on comrades! They are just taking back what is rightfully theirs.

Up the workers.

They will probably run it better than the John Galts...

The Proles are knuckle draggers. If they had any gumption or brains they would have been Capitalists in the first place.

If someone tells you the Workers are revolting you may chide him by saying you already knew that.

Ba'al Chatzaf