We use the words “teamwork”, “collective”, “project”, “community”... to define the work of the transforming social economy. How has the pandemic affected all of this?

Araitz Rodríguez: In our case, very much. We began to apply teleworking in a concerted manner two weeks before the date of confinement. The computers in the house also prepared them for networking, and when they confined us, we thought: “Thank you!” The telework approach came from the need to reconcile life with work, as it was a constant demand to be able to work from time to time from home. We decided before lockdown: teleworking yes, but not every day, because otherwise we lose group status and relationships. The rule that we agreed was to go to work at least three times a week. The lockdown came, we all had to go home and then, when we were able to go back to the office, it was no longer worth what we had agreed upon. On the one hand, because each one is living differently, because it conditions this situation and this conditions the individual; on the other, because the domestic reproductive tasks have changed; and on the other, because he felt “now to readjust to another change”, and adapting to this change has generated other resistance. Going home was a shock and going back to the office was another shock. And we didn't find a time to reinvent the basis that we once agreed on teleworking. At the moment we are talking about “tailor-made for each” [they have used the expression to the letter along the round table].

GABRIELA RENTERIA: Furthermore, we cannot now be all together at work, because of the forum issue. We are ten workers and we can only get five together. So there's no forum for bringing the whole group together, and you notice a lot.

EDURNE MENDIZABAL In our case each person has a specialized position, and as a result, some are many in the centers, others do more office work, others do advisory work here and there... we are also tailor-made for each one, but in some spaces we have tried to meet all. This has been facilitated by the fact that our headquarters are in Iturola [Hernani Collaborative Work Center] and Leitzaran's meeting with Haratago to work on a group dynamic once a month. We didn't meet much earlier, but now we've given more priority to those spaces. It is complex, even when we meet, we have to manage the collection, depending on how we carry the pandemic: all the windows open, with blankets... it has managed to manage many contradictions and conflicts.

CIRUELA ERASUN For us, the main exercise has been to hold permanent talks from the outset, to work on an ongoing basis in the elaboration of agreements in a situation of shock. The situation has allowed us to rethink the molds we had: it cannot be like before, so we have to look for another type. In the discussions that have taken place there has been talk of needs. In some groups it is customary to talk about needs, but in many others it is not. And this time it has been essential: “I need the distance”, or “I need contact”, or “I need to be with you”, or “I need more time at home to manage custody”.

What has served us has been flexibility. I now spend less time than before in our common space, because I have perceived benefits in the ways of reconciling my personal life: I have found a good time from home and what I am doing for.

But what is now useful to us may not be useful in two months' time. We remember things, but we have to do interviews constantly, because we're changing emotionally, and so one day we need one thing and another day something else. It is logical, because this constantly changing situation affects us a great deal. It says “Life in the Center” but now! What does this mean? In my opinion, talking about needs and taking them to the group agendas. At least that is what the pandemic has brought and the need to move, change, adapt. And that requires group and time investment.

A. RODRÍGUEZ: We talk a lot in the group, emotions have room in the meetings -- but the problem I see in this way of working is the difficulty of creating empathy. I'm tied up with the work team, when I have it in front of me. When I'm on one screen and the other on the other, we're each in our bubble. As we are now, it is very difficult to work as a team, because in order to function as a team, empathy is necessary: it is a permanent negotiation to be as a team. Do we hear each other today? Yes. But I can't put myself in someone else's place, because I'm here, in my world. I don't know if getting empathy in the current form is a challenge, or you have to accept it is impossible and you can't replace all things.

A. ERASMUS: That is one of the things that is irreplaceable. A dimension of the group is very emotional and occurs in the presence when we feel the character of “us”. The group experience, the one that is happening to one, the one that is happening to others, does not occur on the screens. We're losing a lot of things. It's important to distinguish which things are substitutable, which if done remotely can even be palliative, and which can't. And for each team, there may be things that can't be replaced, they won't be the same for all teams. For example, the care of formal and informal spaces: the conversations we have on the way to a meeting also take place in this group. This does not occur in on-line meetings and in the life of a group the events that occur in the informal environment are very important.

R. MENDIZABAL: Our colleagues now send us more audios per mobile and longer: "How are you?" I..." When I go down the road, I hear those audios to know how my peers are. But it's not the same, with a cafe you get a lot closer. We need to invest much more with technologies, not with the same result.

What are the things that can be replaced and what are not?

R. MENDIZABAL: The feeling “we”, the feeling of a group, is achieved by being together. In that “we”, in that feeling that we are on the same train, I have noticed the greatest change.

A. RODRÍGUEZ: Another thing that cannot be replaced is creation. Our way of creating is to add something to the contribution of the other. From the idea of one, something else happens to the next, from there another thing to a third -- our way of creating is based on collective construction. I do not feel that we have the same ability to create online, we are lost a great percentage of potential through wifi. What we do online, in short, is distribute works: “This has to be created, you do this part, I am this other part...” and then put it all together.

A. ERASMUS: For me the question is as follows: How are we as a group? But how are we going to know how to answer that question if we don't meet? In fact, the group exists in interaction. If we don't unify each other's vision, we can't see how we are, and the photo we get shows how each member is, but not how we are together.

We shield the collective space for some parts of the work processes: if we've made the team creativity, then we can distribute the work, because we know what we're doing, we know what the essence is; but if we don't make the creation together, we lose our point of view.

Dr. G. ERRENTERIA: The personal scope has also moved away. We don't know what happens to the neighbor. Before the pandemic I knew each of my peers’ daily lives. Now it's easier to lose your personal relationship, not knowing what everyone has in their head. And in order to build the group, personal relationships are necessary, so you may need to build other avenues.

A. RODRÍGUEZ: The previously more informal forms of communication have been lost, for example, the flowers of our office have also noticed. They have confined me ten days, and they have all watered: we have drowned them. With this example, I would like to stress the importance of informal channels for communicating in a working group and the difficulties in keeping them in this situation.

R. MENDIZABAL: In a work team there are always conflicts, and now there is more, because our personal and collective needs are hung up on a thread. This situation has put many of the conflicts that we did not see before us in the face of the nose, the ornaments have fallen and the red reality has been seen. Conflicts have to be put on the table and agreed on how we are going to solve them. But to manage conflicts, and also to avoid them, it's very important to be physically together.

Have you consciously worked on all these issues in the work team?

A. ERASMUS: We have realised that in this situation we have to give a great deal of time to the entrances and exits of the meetings. That is, to see how we entered and how we left the meeting. For a season, we were almost occupied all the time of the meeting! But if we do so, the meetings are very effective, because we decide what needs to be decided.

At this time we have had to work simplistically in the conflicts of many companies, and this situation is very different from the groups that are accustomed to doing things about conflicts. When the group is given room, communication difficulties, etc., we form and if this situation has caught us trained, we can address the conflicts posed by the new situation, but if we are not accustomed, it is like a great slab that has fallen upon us.

A. RODRÍGUEZ: This situation has given rise to many conflicts and in a very personalized way, in some moments it has been difficult to objectify that this is not a problem of one, that can be worked and transformed into learning at a general level. One answer to this problem is that it works “tailor-made for each”. It arises from the need to respond to reality, because it is the only way we have found: we are a small and also feminized group.

 

Let’s look at the “tailor-made” organization: What are individual and group decisions?

R. MENDIZABAL: Organizing “tailor-made for each” has its possibilities and risks. The objective of Aukerak is very interesting to solve personal and collective needs, but the group must set a number of priorities. The group should shield some spaces and times with concrete objectives to guarantee that “we” of the group. To do so, the limits must be very clear. Within that “we” and within the flexibility allowed by the project, each one will make its own decisions and, therefore, the combinations are many. All this requires a significant investment of time to communicate in the work team, to manage conflicts.

A. RODRÍGUEZ: We only operate in certain “tailor-made” workplaces. In large companies there is no “measure of each”! We work this way in the small feminist companies of the transformative social economy, because the situation is as it is, besides having a vision of putting life at the centre... That is, for large companies to be viable, Farapi or another company has to be “tailor-made for each”. The big companies of this kind, which have a great impact on ecology, machismo, capitalism... they continue as usual, but we, life, economy, ecology... what we respect we organize “to the measure of ourselves”, gives rage, makes the desire to call those companies saying “look, we will work to ‘the measure of one’ and you take advantage of it to get your production going”. It is very unfair to see who the economic system is based on, and also on companies: these companies know that they can throw away, because thanks to the measures taken by us and ourselves, we are going to maintain the reproductive economy. Who is earning its benefit? The “tailor-made for oneself” system is based on a pyramid.

A. ERASMUS: Conversations are fundamental in groups: what decisions should be made in this group, yes or no, built from “us”? In each group, the answer will be different. If there is no such dialogue, that fluctuation, that is, who responds to needs and how, can lead to situations of non-survival. To do this, the limits are needed: What are the limits that can't be crossed? What is it that everyone cannot decide for themselves? If the exercise of defining these limits is not carried out, the “we” may disappear or not respond to the needs of each. Because the situation does not guarantee a sustainable life.

A. RODRÍGUEZ: I lack external communication from the group. Because we negotiate on our team, but the team cannot negotiate with the rest of the system, with the other companies. The crisis of care has become apparent, and it is clear that there is also no equity between companies. Large companies rely on the over-effort of other companies. Despite the efforts made to maintain a healthy team, the cost overruns are enormous, as the imbalances of other companies are being solved by us.

In addition, the idea of putting lives at the center is very distorted. It seems that putting life in the middle means that I put all my needs on the work table and that others have to manage me. And no, behind that “putting lives at the center” is a much more general view! But sometimes we address this issue, leaving aside all that ideological vision, from the never-ending “I”, from a very capitalist perspective.

A. ERASMUS: How about emptying content?

A. RODRIGUEZ: Completely! The “Care in the Center” is a concept of transformation, of revolution, and along the way, many times, we lose that vision. The problem of care is collective. How will we respond to you? When we respond collectively, then we are putting care at the center, from a transformational point of view.

R. MENDIZABAL: I am thinking of collective responsibility. Meet my personal and personal needs on the network. We need networks for our care and for the care of our friends, children, etc. In our work centre we have to have a network of mutual support, but above all in the professional sphere. Mutual support must also be articulated between companies through inter-cooperation, mutual care.

Dr. G. ERRENTERIA: And mutual knowledge. If we had talked five months ago about how each project stood in front of COVID-19, maybe we would be at another point.

It is precisely the maintenance of networks that has been the hardest thing during the pandemic, due to health measures. Have relationships in the workplace changed by the bubble concept?

A. ERASMUS: We decided from the very beginning that we were a family. It's the advantage of being little, but it was a decision. You have to be very explicit on this issue, otherwise you can expect something and if there is not, you get a huge blow. Our practice in recent months has been to explain: how you need it, how it is for you, where we stand... if not, we can be living around different expectations, and if one has not considered the team as its bubble, and the other is just in the bubble!

Dr. G. ERRENTERIA: And when you don't work to explain, what? Because the reality is that in many spaces it's going to be difficult to do it. How can we cope with this situation?

R. MENDIZABAL: It's hard, but if you don't explain it, you never know what it really is, and day-to-day management is a huge investment. That is compensated by the low demand and the hard waistline. Thinking about it, “Go ahead, we are alive.” This year nothing will have a special brilliance; it is enough to move forward. At work, in leisure time, in networks... much less, this year is a “very high”.

Looking forward: Where to go from the previous classic work scheme?

A. ERASMUS: What is the point of this? Common spaces, times and places: explain, decide and take care of their essentials. When I think about the tools for this phase, flexibility comes to mind with a lot of strength: practicing flexibility, but that's right, identifying the core and taking care of that core above all else. Some of the above things are not beneficial from the collective point of view either: action, space and time must be overcome by a transformative vision of work. That has to be clear, because life is not just given in actions, and work is not measured in time.

A. RODRÍGUEZ: It seems to me that at the moment we are in transit: before it was a job, then there was a pause, now we are building other forms of work, but nothing is rooted... the future is in dispute. Who will mark that future? I would like us to be the ones who will mark, the groups that work with another perspective, the ones who are respectful of work, the workers, the times, the spaces... COVID-19 has shown that anything is possible. We need synergies: we have the capacity to fight the dispute of the future.

A. ERASMUS: Putting a model into practice is in itself winning. Although that does not change the others, there is already a victory there.

Dr. G. ERRENTERIA: What I've learned in recent years is that: we can talk a lot, but if we don't put it into practice, we never change anything. When I think about the rag, I always think about this question. What projects do I want to be in? What does it respond to? Personal decisions are related to the project, because if my own decisions to respond to my needs go against the nature of the project, I will think about it five times before I do so. We each build our project.

A. RODRÍGUEZ: That is why we have to seek synergies to influence outside these projects and not the other way around: that external global trends do not condition the project. We have to pay attention to the wedge they bring us in this dispute: the discourse that atomized teams are possible – if one worker can be in the United States and another in China, why do we need workers there? – that of calling “telework” to care for and work for children at the same time...

A. ERASMUS: That was a great insult to the intelligence of the workers.

A. RODRÍGUEZ: If the on-line work makes our lives stimulating, this should be facilitated where possible. But there is an online job that has other connotations and is being pushed: because it is cheaper for the company, brings atomization, forces you to work at any time because you have to connect with the worker who is in Istanbul…

A. ERASMUS: This invasion of worker space is being brutal in many companies of all kinds. Permits have been taken that did not exist under any circumstances: as the other is working from home, permission has been taken to expect him to be working at any time. If the personal schedule is not very clearly limited, if it is not made clear that outside it you will not be called by phone to say anything, we will go to a timetable without schedules. That is an obvious step backwards.

R. MENDIZABAL: It's important to set limits, shut down your phone. In the lockdown it was clear that the day had become a poteo, that there were pulls and that we could no longer. There we learned, at least in some things, to set limits.

As a society, there's a lot of uncertainty about what's coming. It is clear that we have many new needs at the personal and collective level. To the projects that we have to take into account the needs of the people, many opportunities arise, but we also sometimes need forums for debate and reflection among us to see what the needs are, where they are deceiving us, how to set limits... the interdependence that keeps us more present than ever: personal, collective, professional, labor, politics... We have to open up possibilities, because uncertainty also gives a point of illusion. You walk very carefully where you're going to be fooled.

 

“WE WILL BRING THE DAY FROM FARAPÍN TO SEVEN HOURS”

Araitz Rodríguez:

“At Farapi we have a challenge for a long time, to lower the day, charging and quoting the same. And we've decided we're going to do it this year. We will drop the day to 7 hours, of which 6 will be productive hours and an hour of rest but in office and paid. It is also a way to recognize that informal spaces are necessary at this time, as they are necessary for the group to continue producing in a healthy way. In our case, lunchtime fulfills this function, we meet around the table with humor, we talk about personal, projects... The approach to reducing working hours has helped to work consciously and to see informal spaces as political issues. He is also aware of what has been torn apart as a group. Let us hope that one day we will all return to the office and be able to implement this approach in its entirety."