Labor solidarity in the 1990s must move beyond fantasies. The exhortation, "workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains," inspired socialist trade unionists over the last century Striking Coca-Cola workers singing on the roof of the company's plant in celebration of a union settlement in 1985. toward an idealized vision of working-class interna- tionalism. Their hope was partially realized with the formation of international trade secretariats attached to various unions, but as protective national labor movements thrived and the left-wing labor impetus faded, the original notion of global worker unity grew distant, archaic and dreamy. Meanwhile, capitalists have become the internation- alists for whom borders are an obstacle and national- ism a waning ideology. Capitalists have accelerated the globalization process with their own firms backed by powerful international organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and now the new World Trade Organization which will oversee the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Such organizations operate outside political regimes, command enormous resources, affect the daily lives of millions of people, and have no public accountability. Yet as capitalists pursue the internationalization of economic and financial poli- cies, their agreements on trade and related issues-indirectly bol- stered by the Decem- ber 1994 heads-of- state summit in Miami-can mean life or death for millions of Latin Americans. The new phase of capitalist expansion has weakened tradi- tional accommodations with national unions which have long been declining in strength. Today, even with less than 12% of the private U.S. workforce unionized, companies look toward the available world pool of bargain-price labor. To counter the interna- tional clout of mighty corporations, cross-border cooperative struggles of workers and kindred groups have become a matter of survival. Corporations increasingly have interconnected glob- al operations. Take the world's largest shirt maker headquartered in New Jersey, Phillips Van Heusen (PVH). While it has mainland factories, PVH subcon- tracts all over the map, with direct production facili- ties in Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico. All of these plants can be visualized as "depart- ments" of a single global factory. In the U.S. "depart- ment," for example, after a particular garment is designed, workers size the model, then mark and cut the cloth into component parts of the shirt. These parts are shipped to another "department," a maquiladora finishing or assembly plant in Honduras or Guatemala. There, the "lower-skilled" tasks are completed-the stitching together of components, pressing, folding and packaging. The garment is then shipped back to the United States where it is marketed. 16NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Deborah Levenson-Estrada teaches history at Columbia Universi- ty, and is the author of Trade Unionists Against Terror (Universi- ty of North Carolina Press, 1944). Henry Frundt teaches sociolo- gy at Ramapo College, and is the author of Refreshing Pauses: Coca Cola and Human Rights in Guatemala (Praeger, 1987). NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16REPORT ON SOLIDARITY The PVH example represents a step beyond the process Lenin wrote about when imperialism meant the internationalization of capital. Now, it involves the internationalization of production and distribution. Class solidarity now demands the confrontation of common employers like PVH. Ultimately, this neces- sitates organizing the various departments. Many workers, however, have no means of communicating with workers in other countries, even if their hands touch the same cloth. This must change. Working- class internationalism is not a utopian vision, but a bread and margarine, rice and beans issue. Without it, employers will freely maneuver within their global operations to maximize profit with little regard for the Worki impact this has on the workers internation they hire and fire around the world. If production and owner- utopian visi ship are global, workers' organi- and be zation must be as well. A clear cross-border organizing If produ strategy must first shift from nationalism as the primary trade- ownership union response to the loss of jobs workers' o when U.S. factories move abroad. It must combat the xenophobia of must b U.S. workers who protest the "giving" of "American" jobs to non-union "foreigners"-whether the reference is to workers in a Central American city, or to a seedy, subcontracting workshop in a U.S. Chi- natown. Many labor activists realize that a new sort of inter- nationalism must be created. During the Cold War, U.S. unions often organized abroad under U.S. gov- ernment auspices. The AFL-CIO-sponsored American Institute of Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which sought to undermine the appeal of Communist-led labor organizations, also organized under the patron- age of the U.S. government. With the end of the Cold War, the importance of these anti-Communist groups is diminishing. Today, a number of U.S. unions, influ- enced by the example of European international trade secretariats, are expanding pragmatically, not to undercut the left, but to maintain bargaining power with employers. Mexico has been the site of lively organizing drives by the United Electrical Workers (UE) working with the Authentic Workers Front (FAT) at General Electric, the Teamsters at Honey- well, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) at Mexi- can Ford and Volkswagen plants. The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) are also following factories across borders n a 0 c to organize textile workers in the Dominican Repub- lic, Guatemala, Honduras and elsewhere. Building a new labor internationalism is a task fraught with difficulties. There are numerous econom- ic, political and cultural differences to be worked through, as well as mutual suspicions flowing from ideological divergences and past allegiances. Many Latin American trade unionists, for example, believe their Northern counterparts may still have links to the CIA, while some U.S. activists worry that the Latin Americans' leftist orientation may compromise shop- floor organizing. Despite these difficulties, a fresh international- ism has been developing on the unlikely terrain of Guatemalan g-class labor struggles. Because it is nei- lism is not a ther highly industrialized nor highly unionized, Guatemala may n, but a rice appear an unlikely birthplace for a ns issue. new internationalism, but workers in this "peripheral" nation have tion and stimulated innovative approaches to cross-border organizing. are gloual, rganization e as well. n mid-1975, 150 workers organized a union at a Coca Cola bottling plant in Guatemala City. The franchise owner, a U.S. national, was noto- riously anti-union, and was pleased to be living in a country where trade unionists were-and are-routinely disappeared and tortured to death. After considerable anti-union violence, Coke workers and supporters contacted the American Friends Service Committee staff working in Central America, and the New York-based Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), which took up their cause. International pressure from these religious groups, combined with continuous shop-floor agitation inside the plant, led to union recognition and a con- tract in 1978. Subsequently, the company did every- thing it could to destroy the union, constantly violat- ing the contract, and beating and jailing union leaders. Several workers were killed, and trade-union member- ship declined. In 1979, the Geneva-based International Food and Allied Workers Secretariat (IUF) joined religious and human rights groups in an enormous global cam- paign, bringing a class perspective to what had been largely a human rights issue. From late 1979 to mid- 1980, the IUF combined a successful letter-writing campaign to the Guatemalan Presidential Palace with support strikes in Venezuela, France and Mexico, along with union endorsements of a Coke boycott in over 20 countries including Canada, Germany, Italy and Israel. It convened meetings between the representatives of the parent company in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Guatemala City union. It inspired hun- dreds of newspaper and magazine articles in dozens of languages about the violence against Guatemalan Coca Cola workers. It also encouraged the world's largest trade- union body, the Inter- national Confederation of Free Trade Unions Sewing machines being removed fr (ICFTU), to support a following the owners' decision to n tourist boycott of Guatemala. In the plant, 60 besieged unionists kept on with the struggle. In August, 1980, shortly after another five Coke workers were killed, the pressure on Coke's Atlanta headquar- ters became unbearable. It transferred the franchise to new owners on the condition that they respect the union-a tremendous victory for the workers and their international supporters. By this time, Guatemala was engulfed in a civil war, and most of the nation's unions had been destroyed by state-corporate violence. Yet, protected by internation- al support in this adverse situation, the Coke union, an exceptional survivor, grew. Over the next few years, it developed a profound sense of historical mission, a David overcoming Goliath, a symbol of the capacity to accomplish what seemed impossible. In February, 1984, the new owners-experienced soft-drink busi- nessmen in Latin America-closed the company due to "bankruptcy." In fact, Coke had sold them the fran- chise so they could milk it dry. Even though the coun- try was under military rule, over 400 workers occu- pied the plant for one year. With the support of the IUF and a remobilized international movement, the workers won their third major battle in ten years. In 1985, Atlanta officials sold the franchise to yet anoth- er set of owners who, to date, have kept their agree- ment to respect the union, which remains one of the strongest in the country. The Coca Cola example contains many of the ingre- dients required for the international labor solidarity of the future. The union's survival in the face of repeated and grotesque attacks depended on the initiative of a small number of individuals: the minority of workers at Coke who kept the union going in the worst of times; the few religious/human rights workers in Cen- tral America and elsewhere who promoted their cause; "eo el and the dedicated individuals at the IUF who decided to make an international case out of Coke. The Coke union's perse- verance was also the result of large-scale collective actions: mobilizations by the majority of Coke workers; letter writing by thousands of peo- ple; and beverage boycotts and solidari- ty strikes by thou- sands of consumers m the Transcontinental maquiladora and workers around ocate. the world. Key was the dialectical interchange between individual actions, which often appear to be idealistic uphill battles, and the large institutional efforts that ultimately sheltered the union. The lesson is that international secretariats, even social-democratic ones like the IUF, cannot single- handedly build a large and expansive global campaign. In this instance, the campaign politics were simple enough: opposition to state and company violence, and support of workers' rights to a living wage and decent conditions. It was, however, the interplay of individual initiative and collective action that kept the union firm, relatively democratic, and effective. Without the strong local, the international campaign would have been meaningless, and without the international support, the union would have been destroyed. future international labor movement must emulate the Coke model by maintaining both local and international strength. The model must, however, be modified to fit patterns of interna- tional production and distribution that involve subcon- tracting, legal restructuring, and inter-company trade. In the ten years following the Coke success, Guatemalan workers have attempted this adaptation in fits and starts through cooperation with the Guatemala Labor Education Project (GLEP) and related groups. After Guatemala was returned-by the military-to a shaky civilian rule in 1986, rural and urban workers began to organize into a number of confederations such as the independent Union of Guatemalan Work- ers (UNSITRAGUA), and the Confederation of Guatemalan Unions (CUSG) which was largely fund- ed by AIFLD. In 1987, U.S. activists, Guatemalan exiles, and staff members of ACTWU inaugurated GLEP to build on the solidarity generated by the Coca 18 NACL4 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS s18 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON SOLIDARITY Cola strike. GLEP was premised on the understanding that the intensity of Guatemalan state violence made Guatema it very difficult for Guatemalan unionists ha workers to win anything without international solidarity. The need for organiz a special mediating group like neighborh GLEP-as opposed to a committee within an existing U.S. union-was maquilado clear. Without having to wade through the bureaucracy of a U.S. be concent union, GLEP could act directly and should tf quickly to support Guatemalan labor unions, look for ways to educate leave, the U.S. workers, and encourage U.S. unions to join in these efforts. But have GLEP, in common with the IUF and organi the post-1986 labor movement in Guatemala, faced additional unfore- seen challenges due to transforma- tions in the Guatemalan economy and workforce. By the mid-1980s, not only was the labor movement small and plagued with the traumas that state terror constantly reproduces, but existing Guatemalan indus- try had slithered into crisis due to lower revenues and increased debt payments. Factory after factory-- including many in the food and beverage sector where the IUF sought to organize-shut their doors. As the existing industrial working class stagnated, workers moved into the informal economy where they enjoyed even fewer legal protections. By 1995, Guatemala City's informal sector employed two-thirds of its eco- nomically active population. In the formal sector, many workers had moved from larger companies to smaller ones where working conditions remained harsh, and organizing was particularly difficult. New industries, largely composed of maquiladoras, arrived during this period of growing urban and rural poverty, when capitalist restructuring called for priva- tization, a sharp decrease in social spending, and the lowering of labor costs through the downgrading of labor conditions and lowering of wages. Since 1986, maquiladora plants, located either in the city or on the outskirts of nearby towns whose residents usually work in agriculture, have increased from six to nearly 500. They are owned by citizens from Guatemala and other countries, notably Korea. Guatemalan maquiladoras generally are finishing plants which assemble garments cut in the United States. The approximately 100,000 workers they employ are pri- marily young women-some as young as eleven years of age. As elsewhere in the hemisphere, they have now replaced men in a new "re-gendering" of Guatemala's industrial workforce. Organizing the maquiladora sector, and allying with workers in the ilan trade ve begun to re in the oods where ,ras tend to rated. Then, e factory Workers still some zation. informal economy posed problems that extended international solidarity beyond the Coca Cola model. In the 1980s and 1990s, GLEP, Gua- temalan unions and their U.S. union supporters have employed new means to respond to these new issues. everal union-busting actions at maquiladora plants in the late 1980s led to local-international labor cooperation. At the Lunafil thread plant in 1987, and the U.S.- owned Inexport maquiladora in 1988, the owners locked out all union mem- bers. In 1988 the Playknits maquiladora, a subcontractor for Liz Claiborne, suddenly shut its Guatemalan facility, without even covering workers' back pay. Following the Coca-Cola example, the UNSITRAGUA-affiliated workers occu- pied the premises of all three companies until they were ejected by police, at which point they camped out in front of the facilities. In all these cases, GLEP rallied with protests and publicity about U.S. corporate behav- ior and, on behalf of Playknits' union, GLEP was able to arrange negotiations in New York between union representatives and the company. Negotiations won monetary compensation for laid-off workers. At Lunafil and Inexport, GLEP helped the workers gain reinstate- ment and maintain union recognition. Between 1991 and 1993, GLEP generated a huge U.S. campaign to force Phillips Van Heusen to recog- nize the CUSG-affiliated union in its Guatemalan plants where intimidation was rampant. GLEP circulated information about the PVH maquiladora inside U.S. textile unions, and organized demonstrations at scores of PVH outlets in at least 15 states. Although bargain- ing has yet to occur, the company improved wages and working conditions, and acknowledged the union. Accelerating pressure on contract purchasers Sears, J.C. Penny and Wal-Mart, GLEP also supported a reinstate- ment of women workers at a maquiladora called Con- fecciones Unidas. Even though the incipient maquila unions remain fragile, GLEP, Guatemalan labor orga- nizers, and a representative of the ILGWU are working to approach other maquiladora workers in an effort to encourage them to organize. To increase rank-and-file solidarity in the United States, GLEP even brought some ILGWU members from the Leslie Fay plant in Pennsylvania to Guatemala. The Leslie Fay workers, who had mounted protests to prevent the company from shifting operations to Guatemala, left the United States thinking Guatemalan workers were the problem. They VOL XXVIII. No 5 MARCH /APRIL 1995 19REPORT ON SOLIDARITY returned thinking they shared problems with their Guatemalan counterparts. U.S. and Guatemalan labor activists have also pressed employers to enforce labor codes that incorpo- rate employee protections. They have successfully el- icited such codes from PVH, Coca-Cola, and various U.S. purchasers of maquiladora products. Working with ACTWU, Levi-Strauss has authored its own world- wide code, and contracts have been terminated for non- compliance. Recently, GLEP supporters have extended the call for codes to the rural sectors. In the United States, they are leafletting Starbucks, a popular gourmet coffee company, demanding adoption of a code of conduct that would require Guatemalan planta- tion owners from whom they purchase to respect basic rights, pay a living wage, and honor safety and health standards. G LEP, U.S. supporters such as the International Labor Rights Education and Research Fund (ILRERF) and the Central American Working Group (CAWG), and Guatemalan trade unionists have also successfully employed U.S. trade law to call attention to labor abuses in Guatemala. This involves pressuring the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to penalize Guatemala under the provisions of the 1984 General System of Preferences (GSP). GSP allows for penalties against countries which do not make progress in eliminating five types of labor violations: interference with free association; obstruction of union organizing/bargaining; child labor; slave labor; and sub-minimum working conditions. Because maquiladora owners regularly commit four of these abuses-there is no slave labor in the maquiladora-- there were ample grounds for action. In 1992, Guatemala was placed on GSP probation. Between 1991 and 1994, GLEP-ILRERF missions visited Guatemalan factories, spoke to corporate lead- ers and public officials, and met with union groups from all the major confederations. All this pressure had an effect. In late 1992, Guatemala revised its labor code to speed union recognition and improve rights for women. For the first time, it punished several cor- porate violators in the maquiladora sector. In mid- 1993, when President Jorge Serrano Elias attempted to assume dictatorial powers, unions participated in the battle to restore constitutional rule. The private sector, and eventually the military, refused to support Serrano because they feared the loss of U.S. trade privileges, forcing him to flee the country. By 1994, facing insistent demands from the U.S. Embassy to support Guatemala's new president, Ramiro de Le6n Carpio, the U.S. Trade Representa- tive was poised to drop its review but twice backed down, first because of ILGWU mobilization over Leslie Fay, and then after 500 police attacked protest- ing workers at the Empresa Exacta cattle ranch in the western highlands who were demanding union recog- nition to assure their legally required minimum wages of two dollars a day. The police wounded 13 workers, killed two, and abducted one, later dropping his tor- tured body from a helicopter. uatemala remains a difficult country for union activity. Workers may win union recognition, but since 25% of the workforce must join before negotiations are mandatory, they often gain no con- tracts. Maquiladoras are especially problematic because they can close quickly, move out machinery, and reopen elsewhere in the same country or a nearby country whenever an organizing drive begins. One innovative approach proposed by Guatemalan trade unionists has been to organize in the neighborhoods where maquiladoras tend to be concentrated-not only inside the factory. Then, should the factory leave, the workers have some organization, and they can better discuss and confront their problems. Workers' neigh- borhood committees facilitate self-defense in many are- nas, and link informal- and formal-economy workers. In thinking out a fresh approach to organizing, Guatemalan unions are debating what tactics are most useful under varying conditions of repression. At issue is the extent to which repression has changed from being officially sanctioned (as under the regimes of Romeo Lucas Garcia and Efrain Rios Montt, from 1978 to 1983) to being controlled by specific owners or landholders who have certain military connections. Even under officially sanctioned repression, as in the case of Coca Cola, organizers could sometimes achieve victory through noisy public demonstrations in conjunction with international support. However, as repression has become more selective and less official, some argue that maquiladora and other organizing should be more systematic and clandestine to assure the 25% union membership necessary for bargaining. "The army really doesn't care what happens to Korean or North American firms, and we should take advan- tage of this to quietly build union strength," stated one labor activist. Others remain willing to hold a well- publicized demonstration in front of a plant, but are less convinced that the clandestine door-to-door work can be done safely, even though it would increase union membership. A fresh approach requires examining the old issue of gender practices and beliefs. The trade-union move- ment on both sides of the border is male in leadership and self-conception, although both men and women belong to unions. Even the International Ladies Gar- ment Workers Union (ILGWU), which has a long tra- dition of organizing women workers in the United NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20REPORT ON SOLIDARITY States, has not yet overturned sex- ism and male domination within its union. To assist in, and not to undermine the organization of maquiladoras, male trade unionists must alter their perceptions of women as primarily housewives, not workers, who are fragile and need protection by male trade unionists, and who in a short time will be out of the factory and back where they belong, in the home. Within the Guatemalan labor movement, this understanding is one most men share with the many women who see their factory work as temporary and their maquiladora wages--even absent ones. The iden- c:Ci rF Al BY GUATEMA EARNING 6. tLtIItt..4U1 UI WuIIIVCII ftUYlUtLUUVIJU A GLEPsoli workers as moonlighting house- wives, and not as workers, makes organizing difficult. Despite the female leadership of maquiladora sit-ins, male trade unionists have been hesitant to organize the maquiladoras in part because they see the workers there as less "real." Since they are not men, they are thought to be incapable of the militancy that trade unionism requires. While some women workers hold this view, many, in increasing numbers, reject it. In the Guatemalan labor movement, women are inventing a grassroots working-class feminism. he Guatemalan case has shown that corporate campaigns and code demands, combined with strong local organizing, can be an important anti- dote to the unrestricted corporate expansion promoted by NAFTA and GATT. The advantage of corporate codes is that they offer the U.S. public a chance to apply consumer pressure as a sign of labor solidarity abroad. It should be axiomatic that if a worker at a cattle ranch which exports beef to the United States is dumped out of an army helicopter to prevent him from organizing a union, as happened at Empresa Exacta, or if a labor leader at a banana plantation that sells to Chiquita is shot dead by anti-union thugs, as just happened at the Chinnok Finca in the eastern part of the country, we would not buy Empresa Exacta beef or Chiquita bananas. Labor solidarity must determine how to gener- ate a larger, more analytical, creative and activist "we." The labor-rights strategy is also an essential political approach that requires the collaboration of unions on both sides of any border. While other groups have effectively documented cases of rights abuses, what makes GLEP-Guatemalan labor solidarity worthy of imitation is its cultivation of a two-way process in g 0 4 5' da LAN WOMEN 4an HOUR? ? developing a labor-rights strategy using U.S. trade law. Given the loss of any meaningful labor-rights pro- visions in NAFTA, cross-border trade-union supporters are invoking trade provisions to emphasize the upholding of local labor laws. Quiet, systematic organizing is a third requirement, but the battle will be a long one. After a number of apparent successes, unionized work- ers have been isolated and prevented from any meaningful ability to nego- tiate a contract, and companies have often closed. As the PVH and other Guatemalan examples suggest, suc- cess will eventually require organiz- mno nll nf the onmninv' "dIPn:rt- ments" around the world. This begins wnen a strong and strategic rity poster. local organizing effort is combined with international worker and consumer support. It demands both sophisticated international coordination and on-site individual involvement. Finally, an effective challenge to male domination and "normative" gender roles and ideologies remains on the agenda. The decades-old "imagining" of class militancy as male really backfires in the new global economy--even if it hadn't before. A new internation- alism must "demasculinize" conceptions of class, mil- itancy and leadership. U.S. unions are not significantly less male chauvinist than their Latin counterparts, but many of the U.S. men and women who work in Latin American labor solidarity tend to be more conscious of the discourse of feminism. If they are not self-criti- cal, however, they risk being patronizing and conde- scending toward Latin American workers-male and female. The problem of sexist ideology and practice, like many others, is international, and the solution must come from the women and men who suffer because of it. Drawing on the Coke model, these strategies offer the beginnings of a program for labor solidarity. They enable unions and supporters across borders to effec- tively fight the elimination of wage equity, health and safety protections, and union rights. The strategies pro- tect the hard-fought-for rights recognized by the Inter- national Labor Organization, now encoded in the labor legislation of most nations. The labor solidarity move- ment is demanding its own codes of accountability and trade-based labor standards and is pursuing basic orga- nizing principles and gender sensitivity. Only in this way will it break the chains forged by corporate power, and allow working people to build their own new and very real international bond.
