Rising from the depths of the worldwide economic storm, a wave of worker protests against factory closures is grabbing both public imagination and media attention.

Their story begins with a sign hanging from a factory gate: OUT OF BUSINESS. LOOK FOR WORK ELSEWHERE. Or else it begins with a letter in the mailbox: WILL NOT PAY FINAL MONTH’S SALARY OR PROCESS REQUESTS FOR SEVERANCE PACKAGES.

Or rather, their story begins earlier, with an owner’s calculation that juicier profits can be scored through some different investment in some other corner of the world. The impact on workers, their families, and the surrounding community have no place in this equation.

The real story begins when workers, instead of taking one last order from their boss and walking away, decide to stand up and stay put. After all, they cannot just pull up stakes in the middle of the night and disappear. They do not make their living in the exploitation of others’ labors or the shifting of money from one place to another, but in the production of real goods, and their livelihoods are tied to this factory and the community around it.

In the last year, variations on this story have been growing increasingly common around the world. Many in the United States are already familiar with Chicago’s Republic Windows & Doors, where 260 workers successfully organized a sit-in to demand severance pay owed them, along the way garnering international attention and expressions of solidarity from the likes of President Obama. However, there have also been boss-nappings in France, a “wall-in” in Poland at Europe’s largest coal producer, and a ten-week, 500 worker occupation at the Ssangyong Motors plant on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea, to name only a few.

Something unusual about these worker actions is the extent to which they are taking place in the so-called developed world. For while the Global South is rich in tales of resistance, in previous decades such protests have been rare in the world’s richest countries. But something has changed, and now in centers of wealth and power from Chicago to Seoul, workers are rising up to defend their livelihoods.

Progressive media outlets have been following this phenomenon, often portraying workers as heroes standing up against the perversity of an unbalanced economic system. However, little of this attention has focused on bridging the gap between the symbolism of resistance and the possibility of a real working alternative. If not this, then what? Can these workers hope for anything better? And what will become of them the morning after “Occupation Day,” when the spotlights have moved elsewhere but their working lives still hang in the balance? To answer these questions we turn to Argentina, the country with by far the most contemporary experience in worker-occupied and, perhaps more importantly, worker-run factories.

Argentina in the ’90s was a poster child for economic policies like deregulation, liberalization and privatization, and while the number of people owning personal yachts soared, so did the number going hungry on the street. When in 1999 the country began to spiral into recession, it turned out the politicians had sold off their ability to defend against capital flight and currency speculation. Within a few years, unemployment soared to nearly 30%, while more than half the population fell into poverty. With factories closing overnight, no new jobs on the horizon and the reality of empty dinner tables setting in, workers began to resist. They were not driven by political conviction or an ideological vanguard, but by an inability to stand the sight of more working factories boarded up in a moment of such personal and community-wide need.

Like with this current wave of resistance, Argentina’s occupations began as a series of atomized protests, largely contained within the factory and directed simply against the closure. But when it became clear neither factory owners nor politicians cared much about the workers’ plights, they decided to take matters into their own hands, towards the return to a dignified working life. And with a disarming straightforwardness they did just that: turning on factory lights, dusting off machinery, and starting up production under worker control. It happened one at a time, with much difficulty and fraught with set-backs. But slowly, it began to work, and over the next couple years these isolated acts of courage began to grow together into something bigger than the sum of their parts.

Today there are approximately 250 recovered factories all over the country, from the famous Bauen Hotel in downtown Buenos Aires to Fa.Sin.Pat: ex-Zanón, the largest ceramic tile manufacturer in South America, located thousands of miles away in the southern province of Neuquén. These businesses produce everything from heavy machinery and textiles to balloons and chew bones for dogs; their services range from accommodations and steak houses to fumigation and air-condition repair. And in the last year more than a dozen businesses have been recovered, including the generations-old Arrufat chocolate factory in the center of Buenos Aires, where 30 workers are right now fighting for their right to work.

In all, an estimated 13,000 men and women earn livings in Argentina’s recovered businesses, all because they refused to join the growing number of unemployed outside boarded-up factories. They work hard, take good money home to their families, and often even manage their own health and retirement benefits, all through democratic decision-making and collective business management. And remember, they accomplish all of this in factories abandoned by their former owners because they weren’t profitable enough.

Furthermore, these businesses have shown a lot of resilience in the latest economic slump. Despite another countrywide outbreak of factory closures, only a couple recovered businesses have had to shut their doors, far below the national average. In part, this is thanks to their democratic structure, with consensus decisions helping to foster greater solidarity and commitment to a shared future. However, there is another reason reflected in these businesses’ bottom lines: without inflated managerial salaries or an investor demanding 15% off the top, worker-run businesses are able to stay in business even when profits aren’t sky high. And with workers sharing profits instead of earning fixed salaries, the burden of truly bad moments is shouldered equally by all, instead of falling disproportionately on an unfortunate few. And what’s more, this business structure provides a healthy alternative for the community as a whole, since economic downturns lead to fewer jobs lost and fewer factories abandoned.

How did they do this? What can occupying factory workers around the world – and those cheering them on – learn from the hundreds of formerly occupied and now recovered businesses in Argentina?

Lesson 1: There is an alternative.

Workers do not have to accept the whims of owners who close perfectly good factories to chase bigger money elsewhere. Nor need the terms of their fight be limited to severance packages and other debts owed. Ask most any worker if he’d prefer a few thousand bucks or the chance to keep his job and be his own boss in a democratic business. Workers in Argentina have already fought for this right and proven it’s possible. Much more than just fleeting symbols of resistance, these businesses are here to stay, proving every day for years they can compete in a cutthroat market against bigger and more established companies.

Lesson 2: Be ready for a fight.

The possibility of worker-run factories is a threat to those living by the myth that only a select few are fit to lead. These people will fight hard to avoid democracy in the workplace, because it is a direct challenge to their place on a throne among those privileged elite. Winning freedom from exploitation has never been an easy task, most obviously because exploiters have appropriated and built up a power they don’t want to lose. In Argentina the fight to win back old jobs under new management often took months, and in some cases more than a year. To this day, many of these factories struggle against corporate interests, powerful politicians, and the daily grind of a marketplace that has no pity on the underdog. But despite all the difficulties, these worker-run businesses exist; and the democratic alternative for which they stand, while at times fragile, is very real.

Lesson 3: Turn the factory occupation into a community-wide issue.

Outside the factory, one of occupying workers’ most important battles is to gain, and maintain, support in the community. This is where local democracy can really work; if you believe in what’s happening, support it: through buying or selling what the workers produce, attending or organizing demonstrations, distributing literature, writing letters or articles, donating food or time, or even just informing friends, family and co-workers. Every action, big and small, adds up to let the workers know they’re supported; it also makes critics and politicians understand the issues won’t just go away. If their struggle disappears from the public eye, it becomes much easier for ex-owners to use heavy-handed tactics to retake the factory and force workers out on the street. In Argentina this support grew up from the ground through community initiatives. And while everybody might not agree with these business recoveries, enough do to have given the option a legitimate space in the public debate over alternatives to unemployment and local business closures. In fact, over time this worker-run option has slowly begun to receive begrudging recognition from the country’s bastions of political power, leading to several favorable court rulings, large subsidies, and even cooperative jobs created by the State.

Lesson 4: Seek some legal footing to gain greater traction in the struggle.

Soon after the protests began in Argentina, many groups of occupying workers registered as cooperatives, both to solidify their status as a working entity and to create a legal body with which to fight for the right to work. They then began to look for some way to obtain permission to use the assets or, more ideally, become owners of the businesses they were occupying. One common strategy was to request that the government expropriate the businesses from their owners and sell them to the new cooperatives, with their accumulated debt owed constituting a portion of the payment. Toward this end they cited a legal norm put into practice by a dictatorship in the ’70s, used to evict families from homes so as to make way for the construction of a freeway. According to this norm, expropriations were legal if used to further “the public good,” a case a number of these cooperatives have  made successfully.

These expropriations have been slow in coming, but the coverage the on-going legal processes provide the movement is invaluable. In many cases they give the businesses time to produce, insert themselves into the market, and win approval from larger segments of the society. And significantly, some of these court battles have been won, most recently that of Fa.Sin.Pat, ex-Zanón, whose 451 workers are now proud owners of the factory they built. The hope in Argentina (and a very real possibility in countries whose legal systems are precedent-based) is that this and other similar rulings will pave the way for wider legal acceptance in the future.

Lesson 5: In the heat of “Occupation Day,” don’t lose sight of what comes the morning after.

For the Argentine women and men who successfully recovered their factories, the occupation period, while vitally important, was still only a brief interlude between two working lives. And while their act of resistance is an important symbol for many around the world, it is this second working life that matters most to the workers. This needs to be remembered when, in the heat of the occupation struggle, the logistics of managing a return to production might start to seem secondary. As soon as possible, occupying workers need to start planning for the business they will soon be responsible for running. This means organizing workers’ assemblies and holding elections for positions such as President, Secretary and Treasurer. It also means staying in touch with former suppliers and clients while simultaneously discussing new strategies for production and commercialization.

This practical reminder is important not only for workers, but also to those for whom the protests and recoveries mean something bigger. For it is through this return to production that the symbolism of resistance can transcend the mere repudiation of injustice, becoming instead an affirmation of a working alternative to support.

Lesson 6: To get back to work, recovered businesses need credit.

This is a practical problem faced by many recovered businesses in Argentina, particularly in the early stages of production. Still fighting the legal battle for expropriation, the workers found themselves without sufficient collateral to access the capital needed to buy raw materials. However, at the same time they were almost always too large for traditional microcredit. Too big, but still not big enough, the recovered factories appeared to have leapt bravely forward into a world that did not have a ground for them to plant their feet. But as time went by, the revolutionary seeds planted by these workers began to sprout in the form of fresh and unexpected ideas in the surrounding community. Responding to the workers’ need, a new concept in lending emerged in Argentina.

Pioneered by the NGO The Working World, along with its loan fund La Base, this new lending approach combines elements of microcredit with low interest rates and an explicit objective to support worker-run business alternatives. Loans are made for productive projects, and instead of collateral are backed by sound business plans and consensus agreements reached in democratic worker assemblies. The Working World:La Base shares the risk, and if the project fails the money loaned does not have to be returned. This means the business can never end up worse after a loan project than it was before. Though some detractors claimed it couldn’t work, WW:La Base found that when working together on a common project, most people want to do the right thing. Over four years, hundreds of projects with worker-run businesses, and two and a half million pesos (nearly a million dollars) loaned to date, their loan return (and hence project success) rate is in the mid-nineties, significantly higher than that of any major private bank.

The Working World:La Base and other similar organizations were born from a concrete need that arose with the wave of factory recoveries in Argentina. This support, increasingly accompanied by government efforts, has been crucial in helping these men and women to get back to work. However, the millions in loans and subsidies are still far from matching the huge sums of cash injected into similar but privately-run businesses. Today, recovered businesses all over the country find themselves fighting an uphill battle to survive without adequate financing. This proof of the possibility to support and affect real change, followed by the stark reality that so much help is still needed, brings us to the final lesson.

Lesson 7: Channel the energy created by the workers’ occupations to affect progressive change in the world around you.

There are moments in life, be it that of a single person or an entire society, in which the possibility to make change happen is a bit closer within reach. The skies open up, and for a short time the ground is more fertile for fresh ideas and different ways of doing things. If you sense this moment, either in your own life or in the world around you, don’t let it pass. In Argentina groups of workers refused to be turned away from their jobs, and from this act of defiance a progressive working alternative was born. Their path was not smooth, and by no means did all their stories end happily, yet nor did they fold up and fade away as so many had predicted. The hundreds of worker-run businesses producing today in Argentina attest to the viability of the path they chose and, more broadly, breathe hope into the possibility of making something fresh and unexpected work.

For supporters of the worker protests taking place around the world today, grasping the moment might mean finding out more about how to lend a hand. However, it might just as easily mean channeling the energy from the workers’ struggle towards some other worthy cause. What’s happening now is significant to me and many others, but to make the world a better place requires a constellation of concentrated interests supporting progressive actions large and small, ranging from the personal to the local to the regional, national and global levels. These workers have made their stand; now it’s up to other concerned citizens in all walks of life to step forward and join them. The story begins.

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