This article focuses on the analysis of a civil construction cooperative guided by the principles of solidary economy. The goal was to understand to what extent this associative experience, in addition to building a strategy of survival and of resistance to unemployment and underemployment, can contribute to the invention of new forms of work and of life that can produce health. A qualitative study was carried out to get to know the main issues involved in the cooperative productive process, its economic and technical viability, and the relationships established among the members. It was found that the project breaks away from the habitual logic of work that is deployed at construction sites, that it invests in worker qualification, and expands a new qualification sense, one of sharing, of associated feeling, and of social commitment to the local community. In spite of the limitations derived from the lack of funding compatible with the specificity of initiatives of this nature, it is an exemplary reference of success under the premises of the solidary economy.
cooperativism; subjectivity; construction worker; solidary economy