Social capital has proven to be a fundamental component of all the experiences, along with the ability to mobilize resources at the individual level making them converge into the collective project of recovering the company.
Redundancy is considered by Norris et al. (2008) one of the three primary factors, together with robustness and response speed, in assessing the resilience of a community or a system. In the analysed cases one of the main elements on which redundancy can be assessed is the availability of alternative resources to re-start the activities. In the case of negotiated and labour conflict WBOs, capital is mainly obtained through the devolution of mobility allowances or severance payments and through the support of institutional investors. The possibility of accessing alternative financial resources, once private capital has failed, has been a fundamental element in supporting the resilience of these groups:
“we started creating a business plan and we realized that the capital we needed was something big. We are talking of one million two hundred thousand euros to go. We needed such an important capital because the warehouse had been completely emptied and because the company, when it could no longer meet its commitments, stopped doing maintenance to plants and machinery” (C., Italstick – Negotiated WBO).
In the case of RSSs, the solid political background of the workers led them to the decision of not applying for external funding:
“we began to think of how to regain our income without machinery, but by investing our time and our work...without investing money, without investing our severance pay, our mobility allowance, without asking for a loan, because we didn't want to be blackmailed. We have invested our time and our work to build the wealth that has produced our income and to prove that it is work that creates wealth and not capital” (L. – Rimflow - RSS).
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