(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #231 - Self-management companies: Scop, the right formula? (fr)

Sea France, Helio Corbeil Fralib, Goodyear ... the issue of recovery of companies closing 
Scop arises increasingly as an alternative to layoffs. Taking stock of the debate on the 
subject. ---- There are forty years in self Lip resumed their business, becoming the 
symbol of self-management renewal 70s. We sometimes forget that it was originally for the 
workers of a construction action of forces against layoffs in their works, without the 
long term pre-established. The times in Scop (cooperative and participatory Company) 
vessels Sea France or printing Helio Corbeil correspond to the reality. In fact, the wave 
of layoffs 2000s is now tangible: it is almost impossible to employee-es to find a job 
after closing, and bonuses, even significant, therefore do not hold. Where a union teams 
refocus on the defense of employment, lack of building sufficient convergence to weigh and 
consider anything else, takes the form of occasions Scop.

A debate to reclaim

It should from there to be fed on a topic in the union debate ... or it is not. In fact, 
these companies do not cover for most recovery in SCOP as a political project and suddenly 
tend to be discreet not to be repressed by the clients. In addition, former union leaders 
can meet directors of the Scop, or the officers can find themselves validate layoffs or 
pay cuts due to the economic slump, causing some embarrassment to speak. Unfortunately, 
this is the end of history Lip, little known, and for good reason!

Fortunately some union teams like Fralib [ 1 ], advance the debate and try to make their 
recovery project more than a mere symbol. At a different level, the 50th Congress of the 
CGT took over the claim of the Left Front government support and protection of social and 
solidarity economy, placing it in both the smoker perspective of "sustainable human 
development "and in the questioning of the law of the market [ 2 ]. For the Left Front [ 3 
] as to the direction of the CGT, the social economy concerns primarily small businesses 
and associations, large companies being called to integrate into "public poles" (to 
energy, medicine, transport ...), mixed public-private structures under the control of 
"public forum" and public aid conditional. It is far cheaper here some orthodox communist 
nationalization. It must be said that many activists have been burned by remittances firms 
afloat by re-nationalization in 1981, followed reprivatizations pronto. The slogan of 
"public poles" is so fly, especially as everyone does what he wants workers' control in 
social-liberal "the strategist state."

Democracy and property

As the nineteenth century with the birth of trade unionism, which was then positioned 
opposite a powerful cooperative movement, or when refocusing the CFDT in the 80s, the 
various self-management tendencies may very well be the foot in the door to a dilution of 
the class struggle. Hence the need to ask the widest possible debate within the labor 
movement: the networking of Scop driven by union teams, support and advice to teams who 
turn to this solution, the popularization of these experiences, but also a step back on 
their sustainability in the capitalist system.

Moreover, as has noted the Left Front, the issue of large companies much more of a 
political nature. Libertarian Alternative to the experiences of 1981 clearly illustrate 
the meaning of nationalization under capitalism, and the question of citizen control 
(because it can not be employees of a company who decide alone-are what they produce [ 4 ] 
) is crucial. But that private property is equally. Suggest that private property and 
democracy can coexist in "public poles" is thus a gross swindle.

Gregory (AL Orleans)

[ 1 ] See " Fralib: The Elephant is not helpless "in this issue.

[ 2 ] Chapter " ? The role of social economy "of the guidance of the 50th Congress of the 
CGT.

[ 3 ] Chapter "Encourage other forms of property" in the human first , a program of the 
Left Front in 2012.

[ 4 ] On the organization of a self-production nationally, we can read the libertarian 
communist project from reflections of our ancestor, the UTCL.