Financing Worker Takeovers in Italy: Unveiling the Functioning of the Marcora Act Framework

Law 49/1985, also known as the Marcora Act, allocates financial resources to Italian cooperatives in order to promote and consolidate worker-takeover operations. This legislation aims at preserving employment levels of distressed companies and comes into force in conjunction with insolvency, industrial and social security laws. Over the years, a series of legislative initiatives in Europe and North America have taken inspiration from this corpus of laws as a way to endorse the transition towards a cooperative, sustainable and democratic economy. The complexity of legislation and financing schemes of Italian worker takeovers are, however, vague to the international audience due to language barriers and the prominence of the Marcora Act with respect to all other pieces of legislation. To offer a complete overview and to ease the interpretation of such legislation, this paper identifies the financing schemes in favour of Italian worker takeovers, comments on their functioning and debates their weaknesses.