Gloria Cordova plotted for months with a few friends, quietly organizing a union in the large Korean-owned maquila where she works outside Guatemala City. Cordova knew that starting a union was going to be difficult, but she wasn’t expecting to be beaten inside the factory nor have unidentified people follow her through the muddy streets of the squatter settlement where she lives. “We had prepared for what we thought they were going to do, like threaten to close the factory. We weren’t ready for violence,” said Cordova, who suffered a concussion when she was kicked and beaten by other workers organized into an anti-union squad by the plant’s supervisors.

Cordova works in the CIMA Textiles factory, which shares a joint production facility with the Choi Shin factory in Villa Nueva, a burgeoning poor suburb 15 miles south of Guatemala City. The two maquilas have the same Korean owners. There are 500 maquilas in Guatemala, employing more than 80,000 workers, most of them young women from 15 to 24 years old who every day enter the factories to sew clothes for northern consumers. They earn $5 a day or less, are forced to work long hours of overtime, and enjoy few of the rights that workers have achieved in industrialized countries. Many have moved from the countryside and live crowded into nearby neighborhoods without sewers, potable water, or privacy.

Maquilas–the final assembly point for products from brassieres to remote controls–are a recent phenomenon in Central America. They began arriving in the late eighties when the U.S. government’s Caribbean Basin Initiative sought to promote a particular model of economic growth in the region as it began to emerge from years of war. They grew through the nineties as foreign investors, mainly Koreans, flocked to the area to take advantage of desperate workers willing to work for low wages. The industry also benefitted from relaxed U.S. tariffs on textile products afforded under the CBI, and an enthusiastic welcome by regional governments, who offered all manner of tax breaks and promised no pesky unions in order to attract the investors. Politicians saw the maquilas as a sponge to absorb excess workers, and thus take the heat off governments that lacked any comprehensive economic development strategies of their own.

Inside the giant buildings, many resembling airplane hangers, workers sit at row after row of sewing machines, assembling shirts, jeans, pyjamas and swimsuits under the watchful eye of managers with ambitious quotas to meet. It’s a cutthroat business, and not filling orders on time means lost contracts. So supervisors pressure workers to produce faster and faster. They’re not allowed to talk, bathroom breaks are severely limited, and workers are often forced to work overtime hours until late at night. It’s no wonder most of the workers are young; by the time they’re in their mid-twenties, they’re used up and returned to the labor force with few skills that would qualify them for other work.

Physical abuse of maquila workers, especially by foreign supervisors, is common. Some of it is sexual abuse. And some is just bullying, as I discovered when I went to Villa Nueva early one morning and stood on the public highway in front of the Cima-Choi Shin maquila interviewing workers as they arrived. When I politely refused instructions by the maquila’s armed guards to go away, Wal Jong Lee, the assistant manager of the factories, stormed out to confront me. I identified myself as a journalist, yet rather than answer my questions about the maquila, he started hitting me and trying to grab my cameras, all the while yelling at me in broken Spanish. I asked him to stop hitting me, and suggested he call the police if I was breaking any laws. He simply hit me some more, screaming that I had no right to be there.

“You’re a great big foreigner. Imagine how he treats 15-year old girls who work inside the factory,” a fellow missionary who investigates working conditions in Guatemalan maquilas told me.

With the exception of a valiant union that formed in the early nineties in a maquila owned by Phillips-Van Heusen, which finally closed the factory rather than tolerate organized workers, no union existed in a Guatemalan maquila until Cordova and her colleagues, after a year-long clandestine organizing drive, went public on July 9, gaining certification of their organization from the Guatemalan courts. The organizing campaign was supported by Festras, a Guatemala labor organization with photos of martyrs lining one wall of its headquarters. During the U.S.-backed repression here in the 1980s, anything smelling remotely subversive, including union organizing, was violently squelched.

Although the 36-year civil war ended officially in 1996, the legacy of repression lingers. “There’s a culture of fear here. The message after all these years is clear: if you organize, they’ll kill you,” said Floridalma Contreras, who coordinates a project with women maquila workers for the Center for Human Rights Legal Action in Guatemala City. “To form a real union in the maquilas is impossible. The owners will respond with violence, with factory closures, and the government won’t do anything. The women who dare to organize a union will end up in the street.”

The Cima-Choi Shin plant managers were caught unawares by the union’s certification; they hadn’t known an organizing drive had been going on under their noses. Yet they responded quickly: the day following certification, plant managers called workers into factory offices in groups, and then one at a time, to pressure them to sign statements renouncing the union. Managers warned the workers that the presence of the union would lead to closure of the factory. Workers were also pressured to identify the union ringleaders in their midst.

The threats were only partly effective, as one-quarter of the thousand workers in the two factories signed union authorization cards in the first couple of days following certification.

Frustrated by their inability to dissuade all the workers, supervisors changed their tactics and on July 18 formed gangs of anti-union workers to physically attack the unionists. Only after the intervention of the Guatemalan police and the United Nations mission in Guatemala did the violence stop. Yet several union leaders were injured, including Cordova, who’d been elected the general secretary of the union in CIMA Textiles.

According to Teresa Casertano, the head of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center in Guatemala, the managers manipulated frightened workers into forming “save the company squads,” which she said are common in Korea. “It was clear that management was in control. Workers would get kicked and punched, but as soon as someone was about to get seriously injured, management would step in to call it off,” Casertano said. “Unions train for that kind of confrontation in Korea, but here we trained the workers to be patient and nonviolent.”

Casertano represents another recent change in the region. For decades, the AFL-CIO’s main presence in Latin America was the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), a CIA-controlled group that plotted coups against elected governments and did its best to help military officials squash democratic labor movements, often using torture, assassination, and forced disappearance. Yet U.S. labor officials in recent years have marginalized the Cold War union bosses in their midst. They’ve switched positions on immigrants in the U.S., coming to welcome them into their ranks and developing programs to support democratic unions in the Third World nations from which the immigrants come and to where many U.S. jobs have been exported. Casertano, who I found at the Festras offices running a workshop for Cordova’s nascent union on the fine points of organizing, coordinates this new pro-worker outreach in Guatemala.

Something else has changed. Maria Mejia, a fiesty Festras organizer, explained to me the process that the labor federation went through before it decided to target Cima-Choi Shin for organizing. Festras looked at a variety of factors, including the interest of workers in a union, something it judged by carrying out interviews in the sprawling shantytowns where most of the workers live. One of the reasons that pushed the two Villa Nueva factories to the top of the list is that they are being externally monitored by the Commission for the Verification of Codes of Conduct (COVERCO), an organization that U.S. garment maker Liz Claiborne, which produces pricey clothing in Cima-Choi Shin, pays to monitor compliance with its own internal code of conduct. Much of Liz Claiborne’s code, like those of several other garment makers, spells out basic measures regarding safety, cleanliness, and workers rights. At least in theory, maquila owners must obey the code or risk losing their contract with Liz Caliborne.

COVERCO is a Guatemalan organization, formed in 1997 by civil society leaders from

several disciplines–including church activists–to monitor working conditions in the garment and agro-export industries. Early in 2001, COVERCO was accredited by the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a U.S. coalition of garment companies and workers advocates which came together in 1998 as the result of a White House initiative to clean up abusive practices–and the public image–of the garment industry. Both the National Council of Churches and the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society hold seats on the FLA Advisory Board.

One of the architects of the FLA was the Rev. Pharris Harvey, a United Methodist missionary who directed the International Labor Rights Fund in Washington until he retired in June. Harvey has worked closely with rights activists around the world in pressuring U.S. companies to behave better overseas.

Harvey told me that a few companies have done a fairly good job of internal monitoring of labor conditions in their factories abroad. “The execs of these companies know there are problems, they want to know what they are, and they want to solve the problems before they reach the press,” Harvey said. “That’s what drives them, but they want to solve the problems in as cheap a way as possible. Monitoring gives them the information but also sets up a new dilemma for them. If they’re going to cut back on forced overtime, for example, they may risk having to move production somewhere else in order to meet spikes in demand.”

Harvey said many garment companies have hired private firms to do their monitoring. “Yet our experience with companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers has not shown them to be very effective internal monitors,” Harvey said. “They’re a high-priced outfit, they do a minimum amount of monitoring, and they’re quick to say things are fine in there. Yet they don’t talk to enough workers, they don’t know the culture of the factory well enough to see the problems that can easily be hidden. There are lots of examples of PricewaterhouseCoopers doing an audit and an inspection, declaring everything alright, only to have problems crop up very shortly thereafter.”

An alternative to having the foxes monitor the henhouse is the emergence of home-grown alternatives, local groups familiar with the culture and committed to honest monitoring of complex work environments. COVERCO is one such group. Yet it’s not merely a local monitor that’s ultimately bound by decisions made in the north. Before it agreed to FLA accreditation, COVERCO insisted on its ownership of all monitoring data and analysis (as contrasted with the FLA understanding that all information goes to the garment maker who then decides what to do with it), as well as its right to make public key findings from its research and monitoring. COVERCO also insisted on monitoring compliance with all relevant international and national laws, not just a particular clothing maker’s code. Its acceptance as a monitor by the FLA led some critics–who believe the FLA is too easy on clothing corporations–to express new hope that the association could make a difference.

The FLA isn’t the only code game in town. The SA8000 is a stricter code of conduct and factory certification program sponsored by Social Accountability International and based on conventions of the International Labor Organization. As of August, the SA8000 had been used to certify 72 factories in 21 countries, mostly apparel and toy manufacturers in Asia and other parts of the world. The SA8000 has yet to be implemented in Latin America.

The Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), formed by critics of the FLA, has competed with the FLA in getting U.S. colleges and universities to join anti-sweatshop alliances, utilizing the buying power of college-licensed clothing to insist on respect for workers’ rights. Unlike the FLA, the WRC does not certify brands or factories as being in compliance with a particular code. Instead, the WRC will conduct factory investigations in response to worker and third-party complaints.

The garment industry has countered with its own monitoring group, the Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production certification program (WRAP). Its cosmetic nature is evidenced by the presence of people like Otto Reich as its vice chair. Reich, nominated by President George W. Bush as assistant secretary of state for Latin America, ran the Reagan administration’s Office of Public Diplomacy in the eighties, trying to sell the idea that the Nicaraguan Contras–a bunch of terrorists–were really good guys. Reich isn’t the only suspicious character in WRAP. Executive Director Lawrence Doherty ran AIFLD’s programs in several parts of Latin America during the late eighties and early nineties.

Although he admits that COVERCO has “little in common” with WRAP, COVERCO Coordinator General Homero Fuentes said his organization is willing to work with all other codes. Fuentes is on the board of the WRC. He told me that despite initial misgivings about the FLA, he’s come to see the association as “an important space that establishes a frame of reference in the industry.” COVERCO has also worked with several European groups, including the United Kingdom’s Ethical Trading Initiative, the Dutch Fair Wear Charter, and the German Clean Clothes Campaign.

According to Fuentes, “The best monitor is the worker himself or herself.” Yet he said that the “lack of a culture of honoring labor rights, a climate of fear and terror, and the absence of unions” all contribute to the need for nongovernmental organizations to step in as monitors without “substituting for the natural actors.”

COVERCO leaders like Fuentes, according to Harvey, “have a clear understanding that monitors are not to be advocates for workers. The monitor’s role is to find the problem and insist that the workers have the right to have those problems dealt with, as well as to assist the workers in knowing where their rights can be expressed. A lot of social groups have looked at monitoring and said, ‘Ahah! We can get into the factory and really make a lot of difference.’ They forget that it is the workers themselves who need to be empowered to make change happen.”

Fuentes admits that unions are going to have a tough time breaking into the maquila sector, however. “The maquila owners see unions as a cancer they have to stamp out before it spreads through the industry,” he told me.

While many place blame for this knee-jerk repression on the Koreans and other Asians who run a majority of the maquilas, Fuentes said that in Guatemala, where the oligarchy has long seen the indigenous majority as little more than slaves, the Koreans aren’t the worst abusers. “When you can finally convince a Korean manager that the law requires something of them, they’ll do it. Yet a Guatemalan owner who learns they’re breaking the law will keep on doing it without thinking twice,” Fuentes said. The fundamental task of monitors, he said, is “to create a culture of compliance.” Not an easy job in Guatemala.

COVERCO’s performance during the CIMA-Choi Shin violence was closely watched by all participants. Plant managers blamed COVERCO for the union campaign and forbade entry to the group’s monitors for several days. Union leaders complained that COVERCO didn’t take their side. “It’s not what we had hoped for,” Festras Secretary General David Morales told me. Casertano, while complaining that COVERCO’s report on the incidents was incomplete, said the union’s grumbling about COVERCO was not unexpected. “The workers have to get over their false hope that someone from the outside is going to fix their problems for them,” she said.

When COVERCO’s monitors were finally admitted to Cima-Choi Shin, they were physically attacked by the anti-union squads. Monitor Ana Zapeta was thrown across a room. “They’re gutsy,” remarked Casertano. “A monitor from a private accounting firm would have jumped in his Mercedes and started honking his horn to open the gate so he could escape.”

Liz Claiborne stepped into the fray with a letter from Vice President Robert Zane to all employees at the two plants, stating that the presence of a union would not cause it to cancel contracts with Cima-Choi Shin, provided the plants continued to produce “quality products in a competitive manner.” While the corporate statement helped undercut the Koreans’ threats that a union would provoke the plants’ closure, the letter was dated July 23 and distributed to workers on July 25, too late to check the worst violence.

According to Morales, Zane’s letter came only in response to international pressure that quickly built up in favor of the nascent union. He displayed a file of letters from unions and solidarity groups around the world, including one from the AFL-CIO asking the U.S. Trade Representative to reinstate an active review of Guatemala’s preferential status under the General System of Preferences trade benefits. (The “active review” of Guatemala’s status had been suspended in May.)

Late in July, the government labor ministry ordered the company to reinstate fired union activists, punish those supervisors and workers who had used violence, and respect the right of workers to organize. Cordova told me the anti-union pressure inside the factory continues, albeit more discretely.

Casertano predicted “a protracted struggle” ahead for the maquila union, but said international pressure would help the workers’ cause. “We now have the ability to move quickly, and can organize a response in the north from consumers, students, unions, and others in order to create an uncomfortable situation for any company that wants to repress the rights of its workers,” Casertano said. “But we’ve also got to do a good job of organizing on the ground here. You can’t just bash a company from the outside and expect the workers to rise up.”

Such pressure from the north inserts the consumer into an equation that before involved only the owner and the workers. Given the inequalities of power in pseudo-medieval societies like Guatemala, where workers have had little leverage, the interest of socially-conscious consumers from far-off northern climes has helped to level the playing field.

Organized consumer pressure to date has centered on upscale brands that basically market an image. “Liz Claiborne markets its image as much as its clothing,” said Harvey. “That makes it more susceptible to criticism. A negative article in a newspaper could cause people to turn to another brand.”

Nike is the quintessential brand, perfecting its image so much that consumers pay as much for the swoosh as for the shoe. As a result, over half of Nike’s shoes sell at full value, compared to less than 11 percent for Reebok. “That’s what gives us more leverage with Nike,” Harvey explained. “They can be hurt more by bad publicity. Nike isn’t really any worse than other companies, though it has a very arrogant corporate culture which has seen its relationship to its critics as a sporting competition.”

Where it is harder to get consumer traction is with cheaper labels in stores like Walmart and Kmart. People go there to buy inexpensive clothing and are less likely to worry about brands. Rights activists have little leverage with these bottom-feeders, though Harvey looks to the day when that will change, when the labeling of maquila products will make it easier for consumers to make better decisions.

“Monitoring should help to create a better climate for respecting workers’ rights, and should help to create a consuming public that has a choice,” Harvey said. “I look forward to the day, perhaps in ten years, when consumers will look at clothing just as they now look at tuna. Lots of people now check automatically to see if it’s dolphin-friendly tuna, irrespective of what brand they’re buying. They started off buying Bumble Bee or whatever company first put that label on there, but now they look for that label itself.”