I hear a lot about businesses that operate as worker co-ops or have transitioned to operate as co-ops. I'm struggling to find any examples of institutions of higher learning operating this way and I'm curious if anyone knows of any, or knows of any reason this isn't done in higher-ed. Would any of you lovely people be able to clue me in or point me in the direction of what I'm talking about?
Thanks!
In a way: On paper membership of a labour union is mandatory for both wage and independent workers. Every now and then the CGT splits but you have to belong to "a" CGT so everyone gets the benefits. However there's something like a 50% rate of unregistered labour. Being unregistered gives you no vacations, minimum wage, health coverage outside public hospitals, etc but employers are very heavily fined for it. The fines make it so that the employer has to offer you something in exchange for not snitching on them: snitching entitles you to the wage differential, the overtime, the paid vacations, all unpaid complementary wages, their share of the retirement fund, unjustified severance pay (which is a month of wages for each year worked) plus the fine which also goes to you.
This something in times of crisis can be to have a job at all, and unfortunately there are corrupt law firms that have access to the database of people who have reported their employers to the ministry of labour and sell the information to the black market employers, so once you've snitched you may not get hired in those businesses.
damn that is corrupt as fuck. doesn't even really compare to anything we have over here except how we treat undocumented workers (sort of). from a very "grass is greener" point of view I'd like to think you're lucky to even have those institutions to work with even if they are hobbled by a shit government. But it does sound like a nightmare. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions
I've hitchhiked in South America quite a bit and when it comes to corruption we really don't have it that bad. Petty corruption in particular is almost unseen here and ubiquitous in Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Perú, and so on. When Perón (or Kirchner these days) is in government real wages and retirement payouts grow by a lot (before the neoliberal party came to power Argentina had the highest minimum and average wage among our neighbours), social programmes, even if inadequate, are erected, like a supplementary income per child for poor mothers or free laptops for all public high school students—which helped most of my University friends and wihch would have come so handy during the pandemic if it had not been gutted—. In general like I say they 'deliver the goods' and keep consumption high and the local small industrialists happy.