Sneakers from CUC
(Cooperativa Unidos por el Calzado)

Even before the economic collapse of 2001, there were many signs of trouble in Argentina with numerous factory closings and high rates of unemployment. One such factory that went bankrupt made shoes for Adidas. Many of the workers had been in the factory for more than a decade and were highly skilled so they petitioned the courts and legislature and obtained the rights to re-open the factory. The 190 workers in the factory could make world-class shoes but did not have a brand or the capital to easily develop a market. Even as they began production, they often had to provide a sale price of shoes at 30% below market in order to get advances to buy the raw materials. Such a situation put the new venture close to bankruptcy. The Working World came along to offer capital and consulting that is leading to a marketing campaign tapping supportive volunteers skilled in graphics, marketing, and even sneaker design and then to create space for C.U.C.’s own shoe line in ‘fair trade’ stores and a hotel in Buenos Aires. Now negotiations are underway for much more export of the shoes.

To order these products, contact us by email.

Shirts from CERES

Prior to the economic collapse, the seamstresses at Ceres suffered the common abuses of the apparel industry. They worked for years in difficult conditions with overtime at a fraction of their legal wages and overall wages less than 10% of their contracted wage. Then when the factory closed in 2001, the men and women of Ceres fought legally to gain control of some of the equipment and the brand name. They found a new home in another part of Buenos Aires and for two years struggled to find buyers. With help from The Working World, including working capital for raw materials, they gained a contract making shirts for bus drivers in the city. They manage themselves democratically and now are seeing a higher and more regualar income with the skills and the potential to reach a wider world market. We are the start.

To order these products, contact us by email.

Shoes: $64

3/4 height : $68

Boot: $72

(Shoes and boots also available in black)

Leather Shoes from Desde el Pie

In one of the poorest neighborhoods in the sprawl around Buenos Aires, nineteen men and women (mostly immigrants and minorities) formed a cooperative business Desde el Pie - From the Feet. Instead of working 15 hour days with unpaid overtime that is the common lot for so many shoe workers, the workers in Desde el Pie meet in weekly assemblies, divide the returns from their labor equitably, and turn out quality precision shoes of leather sourced from free-range cows. This project was one of the results of an agency called CoopLabor formed in the Laferrere slum after the 2001 financial crisis when unemployment was overwhelming in the poorer parts of the country. CoopLabor was formed in order to create jobs by creating cooperative enterprises and in addition to Desde el Pie, a construction cooperative and a sewing cooperative have been formed. Desde el Pie had been working in a very tight space in the back of a house of one of the workers, but The Working World has helped them build a bigger factory so they can expand their range of products and their employment.

To order these products, contact us by email.

Sneakers: $32

Sneakers: $32

Sneakers from Pupore

Pupore is a very new cooperative. The workers were a part of Desde el Pie but when the Working World gave the loan to Desde el Pie in order for them to build a new factory, some workers stayed at the original location and formed their own working group making sneakers. The name, Pupore, is from the Guarani, the indigenous language still spoken in northern Argentina and Paraguay, and it means “footprint.” They came up with the name so that people might think of what their footprint on earth is and what we each leave behind.

To order these products, contact us by email.

The Working World
www.theWorkingWorld.org

The Working World, was created as a non-profit to support and promote democratic and self-managed labor throughout the world. Their base is in Argentina and they became our contact in order to work with these factories. These factories are especially in need of capital as well as marketing of their products. The Working World has created a cooperative fund in order to provide financing capital as well as to help with networking between the factories, marketing of their products, and now the actual export to us of their products. Their goal is to assist in “the evolution of fair trade: alternative, moral production of consumer goods within mainstream industry.”