Trayectorias de organización y politización de trabajadores de la economía popular de la ciudad de Viedma. El caso de la Cooperativa de Trabajo para una Nueva Vida (COTRANVI) 2016-2020

Abstract

The objective of this research is to investigate the trajectories of labor organization and politicization of recycling workers grouped in the Work Cooperative for a New Life (COTRANVI) located in the city of Viedma, since its origins in 2016 in the open dump. open until they were established as public providers of the recycling service and entered the Separation Plant of the Patagonian Environmental Center in 2020. The popular economy is a social, political and economic phenomenon that in Latin America reemerges as a form of resistance to the application of neoliberal socioeconomic policies (Bruno et al., 2017). The collective organization of the popular economy in Argentina had its starting point at the end of the '90s in a context of sustained increase in unemployment (Grabois and Pérsico, 2014). Based on these circumstances, new groups of individuals, the “cartoneros”, took to the streets in search of materials (Shammah and Saidón 2018), a phenomenon that began to become widespread in the years prior to the 2001 crisis (Villanova 2014). Consequently, new forms of associativity emerged, among which are considered movements of cardboard workers and recyclers, social organizations, and the national movement of recovered factories, among others (Schamber and Suarez 2007). Based on the qualitative methodological design, the case study has been selected as a methodological strategy to address the following research. This study was carried out using in-depth open interviews with workers of the popular economy of the city of Viedma grouped in the COTRANVI Cooperative, as well as the use of documentary analysis. It can be concluded in this research that the trajectories of labor organization of the workers of the popular economy grouped in the COTRANVI Cooperative were linked to constant political disputes. Recognition as workers, through the demand for labor rights, decent working conditions and recognition for the environmental work they carried out. These trajectories paved the way towards the formation of “workers” with “union capacity” characterized by training and politicization processes. Finally, the final reflections of the research are presented, the challenges of the Social Work profession in the face of new forms of work organization and its possible orientations in intervention modalities.