Organisations Without Employers, Reflection on Future Work in Workplaces

Abstract

During the 1980s and 1990s Argentine economy was unstable until finally in early 2000s the economic model collapsed. People demonstrated in the streets. Many factories closed down or went broke. In 2001, the President resigned. Under urgency and uncertainty a new social movement emerged. Workers could face unemployment developing the so-called recovered factories.

In 2020, the pandemic reveals an unpredictable world, where it is no longer possible to rely on structures based on certainties. I resumed my research on recovered factories conducted during 2008/2011, looking for clues, traces and creative practices undertaken by workers in the face of sudden and unexpected events, I chose the terms urgency, uncertainty, inhabiting, trace, prospection and emancipation as useful elements in times of crisis.

Thinking about the future of work in the context of a pandemic or crisis led me to analyze the practices carried out in the recovered factories and then address our own practices as ergonomists. I seek through a new theoretical approach to enrich the transition to future work in general and ours in particular.