The Municipality of Valparaíso together with the Federation of Work and Solidarity Cooperatives, “Trasol”, signed this collaboration agreement, in order to promote the creation of work cooperatives in the commune and strengthen the association between both sectors.
This was explained by the mayor of Valparaíso, Jorge Sharp, who highlighted the importance of this type of initiative. “We have sealed an alliance, through a work agreement between the Citizen Mayor’s Office and Trasol, which will allow us to unite our capabilities to promote the existence of a social economy in the commune and in the region.”
Likewise, the communal chief indicated that “we think that cooperatives are fully in force and play an important role in the national economy. For this reason, we want to learn from Trasol, to put ourselves at their disposal, to ensure that cooperativism in the region grows and this allows many neighbors to access better standards of living.”
For his part, Marcelo Reyes, administrative manager of the Federation of Work Cooperatives, Trasol, stated that they have been promoting the creation of work cooperatives in the area for some time.
“We think that this is a model that can help improve the living conditions of workers, especially those who are self-managed. This is a model that allows us to democratize labor relations and prevent the businessman or owner from keeping the fruit of our work, learning to distribute the fruit of collective work among everyone,” said the manager.
Specifically, he indicated, this agreement “urges us to do our best with respect to our experience to be able to make Valparaíso a city where cooperativism is an important activity and where self-managed workers organize and can have a path of dignified life”.
Currently, Trasol brings together nine work cooperatives that are dedicated to various areas, such as cleaning, education, architecture, installation of solar panels, among others.
This federation was born on September 9, 2015, with the objective of grouping together different associative experiences of self-managed work, strengthening production processes and their management models. Likewise, constitute itself as a space for representation before public institutions and other organizations of the popular and solidarity economy.
