A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #363 - Ecology - Social and Libertarian Ecology: Take Back Control of Production! (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The UCL Ecology Commission was invited to the Résistantes and spoke at a 
roundtable to discuss the takeover of production tools. Our presentation 
focused on the issue of experiences of companies taken over by workers. 
Here is a condensed version for Alternative Libertaire. ---- Libertarian 
communists desire a self-managed democracy at work that would be 
capable, on a large scale, of deciding what to produce based on our 
collective needs while taking into account the need for balance with our 
environment. However, the question of taking back control of production 
is not only central to any communist movement; it must also be central 
to the entire environmental movement.

Even the most reformist movements should ask themselves this central 
question. While the La France Insoumise program, for example, could be a 
small step in the right direction, it would inevitably encounter fierce 
opposition from the entire French bourgeoisie, which detests any 
regulation that might curb its drive for profits. However, the economic 
(and therefore political) power of this bourgeoisie stems from its 
ownership of the means of production.

Furthermore, various companies are aware of the growing contradiction 
between their desire for infinite growth and the finite nature of our 
planet. They have therefore joined forces to try to implement programs 
and labels that would give them a central role in their own regulation. 
Examples include Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), carbon credits, 
and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). All these programs share the 
common thread of promoting corporate self-regulation as a solution to 
managing the ecological crises for which they are responsible. Thus, CSR 
seeks to sell us a vision of dialogue as a process that brings together 
the various "stakeholders," but in reality, it is a step that validates 
management's vision of the company.

Isolated Experiences
We must impose our vision from the material realities of our social camp 
now to challenge the powers that be and their vision of the future.

UCL participated in the roundtable "Reclaiming the Means of Production" 
and led a surveying workshop to rethink production at the heart of 
ecology. Around 70 people participated!
Pierre (UCL Caen)
In France and internationally, there are experiences of workers 
regaining control of their production tools. They are the result of 
fierce struggles that take place in a context of closure of the 
production company. Even in the event of victory, they are isolated and 
often unable to confront capitalism alone. Let's take the example of the 
"Breton and Solidarity Mask Co-op" in Côtes-d'Armor, which collapsed 
after the government preferred to turn to China for its orders. Even the 
factories and services that are resisting are doing so on a smaller 
scale and often have to transform their struggles by sanitizing them to 
turn them into marketing pitches.

In Argentina in the early 2000s, similar struggles shook the country on 
a very large scale as it opened up to international free trade. They led 
to the rescue of approximately 400 worker-recovered enterprises (ETRs). 
These ETRs, which now employ 14,000 people, are facing the Milei regime. 
These experiments in workplace democracy certainly have complex 
relationships with markets or the state, but they each allow us to ask a 
central question: what is the social and ecological utility of our work?

It takes a highly organized team to be able to lead these very long and 
difficult struggles to regain control of production sites and cope with 
layoffs. Especially since today, ecology has become a new pretext for 
site closures. In these cases, it is often too late to take union 
action. Indeed, these sites often fall behind on environmental 
standards, but above all, employees are affected by devastating 
occupational illnesses.

UCL held a booth at the Résistantes, offering our press.
Pierre (UCL Caen)
A grassroots union and ecological alliance
Faced with these issues, militant union organizations are organizing to 
fight back through the Ecological and Social Alliance (AES). This 
alliance between unions and environmental associations has led to some 
emblematic struggles in recent years. Following its last Congress, the 
CGT (Confederation of Labor and Employment) left this framework. In the 
wake of this, the UGICT (management union within the CGT) launched a 
Work-Environment Radar with the engineering association Pour un réveil 
écologique (For an Ecological Awakening), whose goal is to intervene at 
the request of the CSEs to conduct workplace assessments.

These kinds of top-down alliances are good things, but they are not 
enough. We must act at the grassroots level now. Unions with aging teams 
need environmental activists. We have seen that business recovery 
experiments cannot exist without organizational capacity and therefore 
combative union teams. We must unionize and be involved for the long 
term. We must also avoid the trap of bullshit dialogue, as in the CSR 
approach discussed earlier: we have much more to gain by investing at 
the interprofessional level, particularly in local unions, many of which 
are now in danger of disappearing. Indeed, if we want to build a 
grassroots red/green alliance, it's not enough to tell environmental 
groups to approach the unions. There must be people at the local level 
to work with them.

The contradictions of capitalism in the face of ecological crises are 
worsening day by day, and we must adapt our strategies accordingly. To 
transform these contradictions into opportunities for struggle, we will 
need trained union teams capable of anticipating problems before the 
employer. We will also need solid alliances, which must be built now at 
the grassroots level, with environmental groups so that they too can 
play their part in business recovery. These alliances are not an end in 
themselves but examples, a way to believe once again in our strength and 
in a world free from the exploitation of bosses.

Corentin (UCL Kreiz-Breizh)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Ecologie-sociale-et-libertaire-Reprendre-en-main-la-production
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