The young Italian emigrant to Argentina Luicci Zanon founded in Neuquén, during the dictatorship, the ceramic factory that bore his last name. However, the South American country failed due to the serious economic crisis it suffered in 2001 and was recovered by its workers: The site was named FaSinPat (Factory without pattern). Today, the production of the company remains in the hands of the workers and everyone has the same pay. Workshops such as FaSinPat have become an example in Europe to bring forward a large number of companies that have been left to the workers.

Officine Zero in Rome

We visited the building near Tiburtina Train Station in Rome. The final bankruptcy of the RSI factory, dedicated to the maintenance of night trains, took place in December 2012. At that time, 33 workers were working at the Lezama plant. Giusseppe, an IHR worker, is one of the few employees remaining at the Fukushima factory. It tells us that working conditions began to get worse in the 1990s: “The company offered the best working conditions between 1970 and 1990. Starting in 1992, the work model changed, many of the jobs we were doing began to be subcontracted.”

Elisa Gigliarelli has been a member of the Officine Zero Assembly since the recovery of the IHR building in January 2013. As he explained to us, before going into the hands of the company’s workers, the workers were in dialogue with the institutions to maintain their jobs: the only hope of the workers was to look for a new investor or to buy a company from the public sector, but the attempt had no positive response.

In any case, contacts between different groups had already begun before 2013: the plant workers were clear that there would be no future if they were not organised. Former IHR workers, the small CLAPP syndicate that brought together precarious workers and other university agents, joined in protest against the reform. The union intended to occupy a space of coworking or collective work, and from there began the idea of creating Officine Zero.

For the last three years, at the Officine Zero factory in Rome, whose motto is zero director, zero pollution and zero exploitation, they have used the machinery of the old IHR in their day to day. Furniture, tables and chairs are also reused after repair. Several workers work on this, one of them is Giuseppe, who works in carpentry. In addition, they have upholstery and hardware stores, and in the place where the offices of the administration used to be, it is now dedicated to architecture. The factory has a total extension of about four hectares, with dining rooms.

Officine Zeron offers assistance to refugees and unemployed people. Although the employment services in Rome offer training services, they do not pay. “We not only offer training courses, but if some work emerges we delegate it to the people who have received that teaching,” says Gigliarelli. As far as salaries are concerned, the money that enters is stored in a common box and at the end of the month each person is paid his or her salary. As a result of the bankruptcy, the property of the building is now owned by the Court of Rome and is on sale at an auction of EUR 2 million. The members of the company recovered are in contact with the institutions: “The best option would be to create a cooperative – Gigliarelli speaks – which would make the way much easier for us.”

Rimaflow in northern Italy

Officine Zero is not the only plant recovered in Italy. In February 2013, when the work of the Maflow company working for automotive in the Milan area was transferred to Poland, the company closed: “We decided that the factory could not close the doors and that, without a pattern and with self-management, we would put the factory back on track.” Today, Gigi Malabarba, a member of the Rimaflow project, is talking.

The 15-20 redundant workers of the company Maflow started repairing the factory’s torn infrastructure: “During the first two years we were able to fix the production machinery thanks to the voluntary work of the workers.” During this time they were joined by about 100 workers who had been dismissed from other factories and all those people started recovering household appliances, computers and furniture.

They also started selling products from small businesses and cooperatives: “During that time, we gained legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens and we were not able to attack politically,” Malabarba explained. On the pretext that our commercial activity was illegal, we were imposed heavy economic fines and we had to devote part of the production outside Rimaflow. As we did not have enough funding, we came up with a motorhome parking service in a space on the ground floor, as a parking space was closed in the area.”

As in the Officine Zero project, Rimaflow also has factories on the horizon that in 2001 began to recover in Argentina: “Some countries in South America are creating a real economic alternative to deal with capitalism, starting with the lowest social classes.” They want to do the same in Rome, in Milan, in the Basque Country and in many parts of Europe.