As the years went by, FACTA became consolidated as an organization with a national reach, with affiliated cooperatives in different regions, like the provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, Cordoba, Mendoza, San Juan, La Rioja, Catamarca, La Pampa, Formosa, Chaco, and Buenos Aires and the City of Buenos Aires, growing to include some 60 organizations. The cooperatives of FACTA belong to different industries and areas: textiles, printing, audiovisual arts, metallurgy, tourism, gastronomy, food production, shoemaking, construction, paintings, glass, among others.1 During its first year, it intervened actively in conflicts at the Incob meat-packing plant (Bahía Blanca), the Huesitos Wilde pet food factory, and a tambera located in Punta Alta.2 Recently, the Federation played a leading role in cases like that of the chain of recovered restaurants, including Los Chanchitos and Alé Alé, in the La Casona pizzeria, and in La Litoraleña, a factory of tapas of empanadas and cakes. In every case, the BAUEN served as a point of reference and, in many cases, as a place for meeting and organizing.
Years later, Federico Tonarelli, current president of FACTA, gave an account of the first decade of FACTA on the basis of the objectives listed by Resino in 2007:
What said Fabio then is absolutely in effect. The organization by branches of worker cooperatives is most advanced. The rest is harder, because it depends on public policies that in some cases, with its limitations, were there, and in other cases, not. Ideologically, we’re clear that it’s necessary to argue for funds that the State has, product of everyone’s efforts, the collections, the taxes that people pay. We’re very clear on that. What we need to do is grow to such an extent that, technically, legally, administratively, and politically, our businesses are strong enough to resist political changes, and for the businesses to work, and to work very well (…) We have the obligation to make them function, and better than the businesses of capital.
In 2009, FACTA also participated in the foundation of an even larger entity, a third-tier organization, the National Confederation of Worker Cooperatives (CNCT), which brought together an important number of federations of worker cooperatives across the whole country, and today is one of the most important organizations of the cooperative sector. The formation of a confederation of this scope, that currently includes close to hundred thousand worker-cooperative members through 36 federations in almost all provinces,3 was one more step towards try to overcome the historical dispersion that self-managed work suffers in Argentina. The CNCT worked for several years on the 19th floor of the BAUEN, before moving on to a headquarters of its own in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Balvanera.
- http://www.facta.org.ar/quienes-somos/↩
- http://www.revolutionvideo.org/agoratv/programs/empresasrecuperadas/factapresentacion.html↩
- https://cnct.org.ar/categorias/federaciones/↩