BUENOS AIRES — The Argentine Supreme Court ordered workers at Hotel Bauen to vacate the premises within 30 days as of March 26. The workers are charged with illegally occupying and working at the hotel for the last 11 years. This phenomenon, called “Empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores” — “companies possessed by their workers,” or ERTs — became quite common following Argentina’s massive economic crisis in December 2001.

Between 1989 and 1999, the administration under President Menem, among other neoliberal reforms, amended Argentina’s bankruptcy laws, making it easy for businesses to default when the economy took a downward turn. As a result, numerous businesses declared bankruptcy at the first sign of sign of trouble. By 2003, over half of the population was living below the poverty line, and many desperate and unemployed workers had begun to occupy the premises of the bankrupt businesses that used to employ them. Since these workers were breaking into private property, it was common for ERT workers to endure fierce battles with police in order to continue working. They often maintained the appearance of a vacated factory or only worked at night in order to remain undetected. However, in 2008, the government passed “Ley 13828,” which allowed workers to occupy and run bankrupt factories under three conditions: that they form a cooperative, that they prove they were able to make it a profitable enterprise and that they agree to make payments to the legal owner of the business.

In the case of Hotel Bauen, the workers maintain that they invested over USD $1.6 million in the hotel during their time there. However, they refuse to make payments to Mercoteles S.A., the company that bought the hotel, claiming that Mercoteles has significant ownership ties to the company that sold it to them. Regardless, Menem’s bankruptcy laws were still in effect when the sale took place, meaning that this otherwise fraudulent sale was perfectly legal at the time.

Although the judicial branch has ruled against many attempted worker takeovers, the Argentine government as a whole has been largely in favor of ERTs. Since 2003, many ERTs have even been awarded government contracts in order to facilitate their resuscitation. The state frequently ended up buying out bankrupt businesses and could therefore agree to long-term loan deals with ERTs, guaranteeing them the legal right to occupy the buildings.

Every semester Silvia Luppino, a professor at NYU Buenos Aires, takes her students to visit one such ERT, Brukman’s Coat Factory.

“Regardless of whether students ... think that ERTs are a good thing or disagree with what they’re doing ... it’s a good way for students from another country to face the reality of Argentine society,” she said.

“The importance of ERTs lies in their demonstration of how people are able to come up with creative solutions in the face of a crisis,” she added.

ERTs are a combination of both capitalist and communist elements as well as democratic governance. They use money and interact with markets, but the means of production are owned and shared equally among all workers. At Brukman’s, Hotel Bauen and most other ERTs, the cooperative’s total profit is divided equally among the employees, from the democratically elected president to the newest member of the work force.

Cooperative-capitalist ventures, including ERTs, have been gaining momentum in the last decade as a long-term alternative to higher-risk forms of capitalism. Ed Mayo, the CEO of Co-ops UK, explained in an essay the economic weight of co-ops today.

“Globally co-ops employ over 100 million people, 20% more than multinational businesses, whilst the largest 300 co-ops in the world have an annual turnover of over $1 trillion," he said.

The workers of Hotel Bauen may have to abandon their workplace by the end of next month, but the cooperative movement continues to grow. Today there are more than 350 ERTs in Argentina that employ over 25,000 people.