Help yourself: cooperatives, once common in capitalism, should be an integral part of globalization.

Today, thousands of unemployed workers in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have returned to their jobs by wresting their defunct enterprises from absentee owners and running the businesses as cooperatives.

This unprecedented "movement of recovered companies," known as fabricas recuperadas, includes hotels and ravioli factories, ceramics makers and garment plants. Some have as little as 10 employees; others several thousand. According to a study by the Interhemispheric Resource Center, a New Mexico think tank, there are 200 recovered factories in Argentina, 100 in Brazil and 20 in Uruguay.

This is not a left-wing-engineered people's movement. It's the result of necessity, especially in financially devastated Argentina, where millions were thrown into poverty overnight after the economic collapse of 2001. Before, domestically made goods couldn't compete with cheaper foreign imports after privatizations, economic deregulation and the end of protective tariffs. Many small- and medium-sized factories were forced to close, leaving tens of thousands to fend for themselves. In Argentina, some owners abandoned their factories after months of not paying wages or debts, sparking worker takeovers.

"The movement developed in the midst of judicial uncertainty and broken contracts, alongside frozen bank deposits, discretionary devaluation and national debt defaults," Felipe Noguera, a prominent political analyst in Buenos Aires, told me.

Cooperatives are part of capitalist history. They are one of the oldest surviving social movements in the world, beginning in 1844 after a group of weavers in the cotton mills of Rochdale, England, decided to open their own store rather than continue to endure miserable working conditions and low wages.

In the late 1960s, I worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama, advising rural communities in Veraguas province on how to establish cooperative consumer stores. I was amazed at the pride campesinos showed in running their own businesses and how motivated they were to succeed. The stores were a success even in the most remote areas.

Today, cooperatives are an anachronism in the new, global economic order, since they are not solely motivated by profit. But they should be viewed as an integral part of globalization and as a solution, if only in part, to nagging unemployment.

The world's rapidly changing economy has an ugly side: Economic progress is uneven, people are fired without safety nets and there are no retraining programs or unemployment insurance available until they can find new jobs. Even though economic growth in Latin America has improved to 4.5% in 2004 (from a negligible 1.5% in 2003), regional unemployment remains high at 10%, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Argentina and Brazil were hit especially hard by free-trade polices promoted by first-world countries and accepted by Latin American leaders of the time, decisions whose effects are still being felt under succeeding administrations. Under Carlos Menem, Argentine unemployment quadrupled to 24% (it is now 17%). In Brazil, unemployment nearly doubled to 8.2% in 2002 from 1995 under Fernando Henrique Cardoso and later increased, under Luiz Inficio Lula da Silva, to 12.3%.

Abandoned. In Argentina, workers use eminent domain, the law that allows the government to seize homes blocking highway construction or to expropriate abandoned factories. The statute allows them to legally control the business either through cooperatives or under state ownership. In some cases, local authorities were eager to take over assets of bankrupt companies that owed them large debts.

Recovered factories are a drop in the bucket, of course. It's roughly 13,000 workers in Argentina, in contrast with the nation's 15 million workforce, and just 15,000 workers in Brazil out of an 83 million-person workforce. And, while some cooperatives are booming, others flounder because of inherited debts and a lack capital and infrastructure. But they offer hope while keeping thousands of families afloat. Regional governments and international lending institutions should support cooperatives. If private companies aren't stepping in to provide jobs and keep poverty at bay, let the workers who know the business save themselves, and offset one of globalization's darker sides--permanently lost jobs.