Fralib is a herb processing and packaging factory located twenty-odd kilometers from the southern French port city of Marseille. The previous owner of the factory, chemical and agri-food giant Unilever, decided three years ago to move production of Lipton tea abroad to save on costs. The 80 workers, through protest and boycott campaigns, have demanded that the factory stay open and, after this proved impossible, they decided to take production into their own hands.

The workers here have recently restarted the machines of the big factory to produce a test batch of linden tea based on local produce, and they are currently looking for ways to restart production in full capacity. Fralib is one of a handful of European factories that, with or without a radical or transformational discourse, have moved towards workers’ self-management of production.

The occupation of businesses by workers and their democratic self-management through horizontal decision-making processes is a centuries-old practice. More recently, however, it has reemerged as an increasingly common phenomenon — most prominently in Argentina around the turn of the century, which currently counts about 300 “recovered” workplaces employing over 15.000 workers.

Can this model also constitute a viable solution in Europe, not only to growing unemployment and poverty, but also to the very exploitation and alienation that lie at the core of the capitalist mode of production? This was the main question that the first European “Workers’ Economy” meeting, held on January 31 and February 1 at the occupied Fralib factory, tried to address. The idea behind these independent and self-funded events was born seven years ago in Argentina, with its two-decades old tradition of factory occupations. Soon after similar events were held in Brazil and Mexico.