'Occupied' businesses flourishing 

BangkokPost: 14 July 2007
By ANNA DOBELMANN

Buenos Aires _ An enterprise in the hands of the workers sounds like a Marxist dream. In Argentina, it has been fulfilled in some 200 factories and businesses. Since being occupied during Argentina's 2001 economic collapse, many of these same firms have lived up to the capitalist ideal: becoming productive and profitable, even investing and creating new jobs.

For seven years, the firms have been managed by the workers from the depths of the crisis that led to the Argentine collapse through today's economic boom.

During the years of recession leading into the late 2001 collapse and the government's 2002 default on international debt, thousands of Argentine firms failed. At times, the economy shrank dramatically, and the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed swelled to more than 40% at times.

In a bid to keep their jobs, workers occupied the premises of bankrupt companies and continued production under their own leadership. The process attracted worldwide interest, but most economists dismissed the worker-occupied enterprises as a crisis phenomenon.

Since then, though, the Argentine economy began to stabilise in late 2002 and has grown steadily around 9% a year from 2003-06.

One of the best-known businesses where the workers took over is the Hotel Bauen in central Buenos Aires. The porter holds the taxi door open and a red carpet leads into the lobby, where guests are met by receptionist Jose Alvarez. "I love this job because I always have contact with people," says Mr Alvarez, 50. He has worked at the hotel since 1980, but was thrown out of work when it closed in 2001. "From one day to the next," he remembers, taking off his reading glasses and wrinkling his brow. "We had no idea of the financial situation of the hotel."

However, employees soon got organised. In March 2003, they forced their way into the building, and they have not left it since. In the once dilapidated and boarded up lobby, there is now a modern bar, where waiters wearing white shirts and friendly smiles attend to patrons. The workers' cooperative has not yet managed to obtain formal ownership of the building. "We demand that it is expropriated from the old owner," said cooperative founder Ricardo Perez.

Many occupied businesses follow similar storylines: bankruptcy, unemployment and occupation, followed by tough times under self- management before achieving financial stability. The businesses themselves were not always at the root of the bankruptcies. In several cases, owners overstretched themselves speculating in financial markets or failed in other big projects.

It is estimated that there are currently some 250 occupied businesses in Argentina, and more are springing up all the time. "In the past three months, four new factories have joined the movement," said Alejandro Coronel, vice president of the national union of occupied firms. Those already in place have added to their workforces by hiring new people, in some cases even doubling payrolls. Everyone gets the same salary, even for different jobs within the same firm.

Before it first closed its doors, for example, the Hotel Bauen had 70 employees who often worked overtime to keep the place running and in good maintenance. Today, there are 160 employees, and none works more than 40 hours a week.

From the outside, worker-managed businesses behave like traditional companies. In internal relations, however, there are not always simple, clear systems of participation in the decision-making process. Decisions ranging from investments to wages _ both hikes and cuts _ are taken at the grass-roots level. Experience has shown that the most successful businesses take participation seriously. DPA


Church reasserts itself, in Latin 

Is Pope Benedict turning back the Catholic clock?

By PHILIP PULLELLA
BangkokPost: 14 July 2007

Vatican City _ Critics say Pope Benedict XVI, in several recent controversial moves, is turning the Roman Catholic Church's clock back by half a century and alienating Muslims, Jews and Protestants in the process. Supporters say that by allowing a wider use of the Latin Mass and reasserting Catholic primacy over other religions, he is trying to revitalise his 1.1 billion-member church and prepare it for an uncertain future.

"Basically, what we are in the grip of at the moment, and Benedict is one of the engineers of this, is what I would call a strong reassertion of traditional Catholic identity," said John Allen, author of several books on the church and the Vatican.

Some saw his decision to allow a wider use of the old-style Latin Mass as a blow to the reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, which substituted Latin for local languages, modernised the church and encouraged inter-religious dialogue.

Catholics who thought the days of incense and dead languages were behind them were puzzled. Jews voiced concern over the possible use of prayers for their conversion in the old Mass.

The Pope also approved a document which said all other Christian denominations apart from Catholicism were wounded and not full churches of Jesus Christ, drawing the ire of a number of Protestant groups who said it would hurt dialogue.

"This is the Pope being the German professor who is going to clarify language in his classroom. And he thinks the world is his classroom," said Father Tom Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Centre at Georgetown University.

"The problem with that is that he defines what a church is and by doing so takes any discussion of what a church is off the table in dialogue [with other religions]," said Father Reese, a leading US Jesuit author.

In the wake of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, Catholic identity underwent revolutionary changes.

The Latin Mass was phased out, Gregorian chants gave way to folk guitar masses, and Jews, Muslims and other members of other Christian faiths were no longer seen as heretics to be converted or shunned.

"The basic debate after Vatican II was: Should we become more like the world, more modern, more relevant in order to meet it halfway, or is the world heading off in the wrong direction and the last thing we want to do is follow it?" Mr Allen said.

For most of the immediate period after Vatican II, modernisers won the day even though church attendance fell and the number of men who left the priesthood rose.

Nuns stopped wearing traditional habits, some priests took normal day jobs so they could better understand workers' problems, and in many cases Catholic identity was thrown into the blur of the inter-religious blender.

With the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978, traditionalists began to make inroads again and Pope Benedict's actions this month were seen by some as a clear fingerpost for the church's future _ what some see as a hard right turn.

"His intention is not to insult people but many times that's the way it comes across," Father Reese said.

"He uses words the way he defines them whether people like it or not, whether it upsets gays, women, theologians, Protestants or Muslims."

Last year Muslims protested after the Pope used a quote that associated Islam with violence. He said he was misunderstood and later expressed his esteem for Muslims but the sting remains.

George Weigel, a prominent US lay Catholic theologian, author and leading conservative commentator, sees Catholic identity as a matter of life and death for the church.

"Christian communities which maintain a clear sense of their doctrinal and moral boundaries can not only survive the encounter with modernity, they can flourish within it. Whereas Christian communities which fudge their boundaries tend to wither and eventually die," he said.

Mr Weigel believes Catholic identity and belief cannot be part of "options in a supermarket" if the church is to survive.

Some see a leaner, meaner Catholic Church in the future.

"The Vatican's calculation is that the retrenchment we are going through now may result in a smaller church but it will be a church that is more focused, more energetic, and in the long term that will pay off," said Mr Allen.

Pope Benedict XVI _ born Joseph Alois Ratzinger on April 16, 1927 in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, Germany _ is the 265th head of the Catholic Church, and Sovereign of the Vatican City State. He was elected on April 19, 2005 in a papal conclave.

One of the best-known Catholic theologians since the 1950s and a prolific author, Pope Benedict is viewed as a defender of traditional Catholic doctrine and values.

He served as a professor at various German universities and was a theological consultant at the Second Vatican Council. During his papacy, Pope Benedict has emphasised what he sees as a need for Europe to return to fundamental Christian values in response to increasing de-Christianisation and secularisation in many developed countries.

For this reason, he has identified relativism's denial of objective truth and, more particularly, the denial of moral truths as the central problem of the 21st century. He has reaffirmed the "importance of prayer in the face of the activism and the growing secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable work". REUTERS