LA COOPERAZIONE INTEGRALE: STORIA DI 'EL HOGAR OBRERO', AVANGUARDIA DELL'ECONOMIA SOCIALE ARGENTINA (1905-2005)

The aim of this work is to reconstruct the history of “El Hogar Obrero” (EHO), the first Argentinean cooperative firm (established in 1905) and the first non-European cooperative firm admitted into ICA (International Cooperative Alliance). EHO is not just an interesting case study by itself, but it represents a cooperative firm with a very strong innovating process focused on the necessities of the Argentinean young working class: almost immediately it structured itself, in fact, as one of the first multistakeholder cooperative firms in the world to meet the different demands of those workers (housing, consumption, credit). In a few years EHO imposed itself as a leader in the urban cooperative sector, especially in the constructing sector and in the consumption. Between 1989 and 1990 it was the 6th most important firm in the country in the service sector and the biggest among private firms. In 1990, during the presidency of Carlos Menem, EHO was damaged because of the “Bonex Plan”-a series of governmental measures which have been defined as confiscatory by the analysts- which brought the cooperative to lose more than 70% of its capital, generating an insolvent condition in a few months. From that moment, EHO has continued its activities with serious financial problems, under legally imposed ban. In 2005 a normalization process started for this cooperative firm, with a plan to pay its debits with bonds. EHO inserted itself in the “Fábricas Reuperadas Argentinas” (Recuperation Firms) movement.