The question for the cooperative was how to overcome this impasse, in which the law was half-approved (only by the Chamber of Deputies). It was mainly a matter of finding the right people in the Senate to talk with about moving towards passing the bill. The person who provided the starting point was Deputy Omar Plaini, then the administrative secretary of the recently unified General Confederation of Labor and leader of the newspaper-sellers union. Through Marcelo Amodio, director of the Free Faculty of Recovered Factories of the National University of La Plata and consultant to Plaini, a series of meetings was organized between the directorate of the CGT and organizations of recovered businesses and cooperatives. One of them was FACTA. Federico Tonarelli, vice-president of the BAUEN cooperative and president of the federation, recounts that “the relationship between the BAUEN and Plaini is historical. He was one of the supporters of the bill in the committees of the Chamber of Deputies.” At the beginning of September 2016, the meeting was held between FACTA and Omar Plaini. Federico himself attended, as did Carlos Ortiz and Fabio Resino, treasurer and trustee, respectively, of the federation.
Omar tells us that he wants introduce the topics of worker co-ops and recovered businesses to the CGT, so we set up a work schedule. One of the topics was the conflict at the Sadowa meat-packing plant, in Mar del Plata, and the other the BAUEN, so he would help us in the Senate. It’s there he tells us “I’ll take care of it, we’ll talk in a few days.” And that’s what happened. He calls me a few days later and puts me in contact with Senator Juan Manuel Irrazábal, a Senator from Misiones, in the Front for Victory Party.