Toward a New Internationalism: Lessons from the Guatemalan Labor Movement
Levenson-Estrada, Deborah & Frundt, Henry
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...
...Between 1991 and 1994, GLEP-ILRERF missions visited Guatemalan factories, spoke to corporate leaders and public officials, and met with union groups from all the major confederations...
...local organizing effort is combined with international worker and consumer support...
...Others remain willing to hold a wellpublicized 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...
...textile unions, and organized demonstrations at scores of PVH outlets in at least 15 states...
...In the United States, they are leafletting Starbucks, a popular gourmet coffee company, demanding adoption of a code of conduct that would require Guatemalan plantation owners from whom they purchase to respect basic rights, pay a living wage, and honor safety and health standards...
...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...
...slave labor...
...Because it is neilism is not a ther highly industrialized nor highly unionized, Guatemala may n, but a rice appear an unlikely birthplace for a ns issue...
...unions to join in these efforts...
...future international labor movement must emulate the Coke model by maintaining both local and international strength...
...Henry Frundt teaches sociology at Ramapo College, and is the author of Refreshing Pauses: Coca Cola and Human Rights in Guatemala (Praeger, 1987...
...It also encouraged the world's largest tradeunion body, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions Sewing machines being removed fr (ICFTU), to support a following the owners' decision to n tourist boycott of Guatemala...
...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 patronage of the U.S...
...and beverage boycotts and solidarity strikes by thousands of consumers m the Transcontinental maquiladora and workers around ocate...
...This involves pressuring the U.S...
...Between 1991 and 1993, GLEP generated a huge U.S...
...unions are not significantly less male chauvinist than their Latin counterparts, but many of the U.S...
...In August, 1980, shortly after another five Coke workers were killed, the pressure on Coke's Atlanta headquarters became unbearable...
...everal union-busting actions at maquiladora plants in the late 1980s led to local-international labor cooperation...
...Many Latin American trade unionists, for example, believe their Northern counterparts may still have links to the CIA, while some U.S...
...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...
...workforce unionized, companies look toward the available world pool of bargain-price labor...
...national, was notoriously anti-union, and was pleased to be living in a country where trade unionists were-and are-routinely disappeared and tortured to death...
...Finally, an effective challenge to male domination and "normative" gender roles and ideologies remains on the agenda...
...If they are not self-critical, however, they risk being patronizing and condescending toward Latin American workers-male and female...
...Quiet, systematic organizing is a third requirement, but the battle will be a long one...
...and sub-minimum working conditions...
...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 Republic, Guatemala, Honduras and elsewhere...
...Even the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), which has a long tradition of organizing women workers in the United NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20REPORT ON SOLIDARITY States, has not yet overturned sexism and male domination within its union...
...Recently, GLEP supporters have extended the call for codes to the rural sectors...
...The advantage of corporate codes is that they offer the U.S...
...They VOL XXVIII...
...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...
...trade privileges, forcing him to flee the country...
...In the plant, 60 besieged unionists kept on with the struggle...
...Many labor activists realize that a new sort of internationalism must be created...
...The Coca Cola example contains many of the ingredients required for the international labor solidarity of the future...
...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...
...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...
...Subsequently, the company did everything it could to destroy the union, constantly violating the contract, and beating and jailing union leaders...
...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...
...U.S...
...Despite these difficulties, a fresh internationalism has been developing on the unlikely terrain of Guatemalan g-class labor struggles...
...Trade Representative was poised to drop its review but twice backed down, first because of ILGWU mobilization over Leslie Fay, and then after 500 police attacked protesting workers at the Empresa Exacta cattle ranch in the western highlands who were demanding union recognition to assure their legally required minimum wages of two dollars a day...
...campaign to force Phillips Van Heusen to recognize the CUSG-affiliated union in its Guatemalan plants where intimidation was rampant...
...public a chance to apply consumer pressure as a sign of labor solidarity abroad...
...Today, a number of U.S...
...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...
...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...
...toward an idealized vision of working-class internationalism...
...Several workers were killed, and trade-union membership declined...
...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...
...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...
...While it has mainland factories, PVH subcontracts all over the map, with direct production facilities in Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico...
...Drawing on the Coke model, these strategies offer the beginnings of a program for labor solidarity...
...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...
...All this pressure had an effect...
...It was, however, the interplay of individual initiative and collective action that kept the union firm, relatively democratic, and effective...
...activists worry that the Latin Americans' leftist orientation may compromise shopfloor organizing...
...If production and owner- utopian visi ship are global, workers' organi- and be zation must be as well...
...The new phase of capitalist expansion has weakened traditional accommodations with national unions which have long been declining in strength...
...unions, influenced by the example of European international trade secretariats, are expanding pragmatically, not to undercut the left, but to maintain bargaining power with employers...
...G LEP, U.S...
...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...
...There, the "lower-skilled" tasks are completed-the stitching together of components, pressing, folding and packaging...
...Negotiations won monetary compensation for laid-off workers...
...In 1992, Guatemala was placed on GSP probation...
...To counter the international clout of mighty corporations, cross-border cooperative struggles of workers and kindred groups have become a matter of survival...
...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...
...In the Guatemalan labor movement, women are inventing a grassroots working-class feminism...
...and Guatemalan labor activists have also pressed employers to enforce labor codes that incorporate employee protections...
...In all these cases, GLEP rallied with protests and publicity about U.S...
...Organizing the maquiladora sector, and allying with workers in the ilan trade ve begun to re in the oods where ,ras tend to rated...
...As elsewhere in the hemisphere, they have now replaced men in a new "re-gendering" of Guatemala's industrial workforce...
...Today, even with less than 12% of the private U.S...
...This must change...
...Yet, protected by international support in this adverse situation, the Coke union, an exceptional survivor, grew...
...In 1979, the Geneva-based International Food and Allied Workers Secretariat (IUF) joined religious and human rights groups in an enormous global campaign, bringing a class perspective to what had been largely a human rights 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...
...Workers may win union recognition, but since 25% of the workforce must join before negotiations are mandatory, they often gain no contracts...
...With the support of the IUF and a remobilized international movement, the workers won their third major battle in ten years...
...The need for organiz a special mediating group like neighborh GLEP-as opposed to a committee within an existing U.S...
...Guatemalan maquiladoras generally are finishing plants which assemble garments cut in the United States...
...Embassy to support Guatemala's new president, Ramiro de Le6n Carpio, the U.S...
...The labor solidarity movement is demanding its own codes of accountability and trade-based labor standards and is pursuing basic organizing principles and gender sensitivity...
...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...
...In thinking out a fresh approach to organizing, Guatemalan unions are debating what tactics are most useful under varying conditions of repression...
...In 1985, Atlanta officials sold the franchise to yet another set of owners who, to date, have kept their agreement to respect the union, which remains one of the strongest in the country...
...The model must, however, be modified to fit patterns of international production and distribution that involve subcontracting, legal restructuring, and inter-company trade...
...The police wounded 13 workers, killed two, and abducted one, later dropping his tortured body from a helicopter...
...Chinatown...
...Although bargaining has yet to occur, the company improved wages and working conditions, and acknowledged the union...
...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...
...These parts are shipped to another "department," a maquiladora finishing or assembly plant in Honduras or Guatemala...
...Now, it involves the internationalization of production and distribution...
...There are numerous economic, political and cultural differences to be worked through, as well as mutual suspicions flowing from ideological divergences and past allegiances...
...By 1994, facing insistent demands from the U.S...
...trade law to call attention to labor abuses in Guatemala...
...It demands both sophisticated international coordination and on-site individual involvement...
...Because maquiladora owners regularly commit four of these abuses-there is no slave labor in the maquiladora-there were ample grounds for action...
...No 5 MARCH /APRIL 1995 19REPORT ON SOLIDARITY returned thinking they shared problems with their Guatemalan counterparts...
...They have successfully elicited such codes from PVH, Coca-Cola, and various U.S...
...developing a labor-rights strategy using U.S...
...New industries, largely composed of maquiladoras, arrived during this period of growing urban and rural poverty, when capitalist restructuring called for privatization, a sharp decrease in social spending, and the lowering of labor costs through the downgrading of labor conditions and lowering of wages...
...As the existing industrial working class stagnated, workers moved into the informal economy where they enjoyed even fewer legal protections...
...In February, 1984, the new owners-experienced soft-drink businessmen in Latin America-closed the company due to "bankruptcy...
...Then, e factory Workers still some zation...
...uatemala remains a difficult country for union activity...
...factories move abroad...
...In mid1993, when President Jorge Serrano Elias attempted to assume dictatorial powers, unions participated in the battle to restore constitutional rule...
...new internationalism, but workers in this "peripheral" nation have tion and stimulated innovative approaches to cross-border organizing...
...For the first time, it punished several corporate violators in the maquiladora sector...
...are gloual, rganization e as well...
...Following the Coca-Cola example, the UNSITRAGUA-affiliated workers occupied the premises of all three companies until they were ejected by police, at which point they camped out in front of the facilities...
...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...
...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...
...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 the U.S...
...Class solidarity now demands the confrontation of common employers like PVH...
...It inspired hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles in dozens of languages about the violence against Guatemalan Coca Cola workers...
...Yet as capitalists pursue the internationalization of economic and financial policies, their agreements on trade and related issues-indirectly bolstered by the December 1994 heads-ofstate summit in Miami-can mean life or death for millions of Latin Americans...
...men and women who work in Latin American labor solidarity tend to be more conscious of the discourse of feminism...
...The trade-union movement on both sides of the border is male in leadership and self-conception, although both men and women belong to unions...
...During the Cold War, U.S...
...The franchise owner, a U.S...
...Corporations increasingly have interconnected global operations...
...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...
...Given the loss of any meaningful labor-rights provisions in NAFTA, cross-border trade-union supporters are invoking trade provisions to emphasize the upholding of local labor laws...
...In late 1992, Guatemala revised its labor code to speed union recognition and improve rights for women...
...Factory after factory-including many in the food and beverage sector where the IUF sought to organize-shut their doors...
...A new internationalism must "demasculinize" conceptions of class, militancy and leadership...
...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 Workers (UNSITRAGUA), and the Confederation of Guatemalan Unions (CUSG) which was largely funded by AIFLD...
...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...
...By 1995, Guatemala City's informal sector employed two-thirds of its economically active population...
...International pressure from these religious groups, combined with continuous shop-floor agitation inside the plant, led to union recognition and a contract in 1978...
...The iden- c:Ci rF Al BY GUATEMA EARNING 6. tLtIItt..4U1 UI WuIIIVCII ftUYlUtLUUVIJU A GLEPsoli workers as moonlighting housewives, and not as workers, makes organizing difficult...
...A fresh approach requires examining the old issue of gender practices and beliefs...
...trade law...
...child labor...
...Working with ACTWU, Levi-Strauss has authored its own worldwide code, and contracts have been terminated for noncompliance...
...GLEP circulated information about the PVH maquiladora inside U.S...
...But have GLEP, in common with the IUF and organi the post-1986 labor movement in Guatemala, faced additional unforeseen challenges due to transformations in the Guatemalan economy and workforce...
...With the end of the Cold War, the importance of these anti-Communist groups is diminishing...
...Since they are not men, they are thought to be incapable of the militancy that trade unionism requires...
...the few religious/human rights workers in Central America and elsewhere who promoted their cause...
...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...
...GSP allows for penalties against countries which do not make progress in eliminating five types of labor violations: interference with free association...
...This begins wnen a strong and strategic rity poster...
...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...
...In the 1980s and 1990s, GLEP, Guatemalan unions and their U.S...
...union-was maquilado clear...
...Then, should the factory leave, the workers have some organization, and they can better discuss and confront their problems...
...Penny and Wal-Mart, GLEP also supported a reinstatement of women workers at a maquiladora called Confecciones Unidas...
...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...
...Workers' neighborhood committees facilitate self-defense in many arenas, and link informal- and formal-economy workers...
...In the formal sector, many workers had moved from larger companies to smaller ones where working conditions remained harsh, and organizing was particularly difficult...
...Meanwhile, capitalists have become the internationalists for whom borders are an obstacle and nationalism a waning ideology...
...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...
...Without having to wade through the bureaucracy of a U.S...
...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...
...purchasers of maquiladora products...
...16NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Deborah Levenson-Estrada teaches history at Columbia University, and is the author of Trade Unionists Against Terror (University of North Carolina Press, 1944...
...Trade Representative (USTR) to penalize Guatemala under the provisions of the 1984 General System of Preferences (GSP...
...Labor solidarity must determine how to generate a larger, more analytical, creative and activist "we...
...government auspices...
...While some women workers hold this view, many, in increasing numbers, reject it...
...In 1988 the Playknits maquiladora, a subcontractor for Liz Claiborne, suddenly shut its Guatemalan facility, without even covering workers' back pay...
...It convened meetings between the representatives of the parent company in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Guatemala City union...
...Even though the country was under military rule, over 400 workers occupied the plant for one year...
...It must combat the xenophobia of must b U.S...
...Many workers, however, have no means of communicating with workers in other countries, even if their hands touch the same cloth...
...After a number of apparent successes, unionized workers have been isolated and prevented from any meaningful ability to negotiate a contract, and companies have often closed...
...eo el and the dedicated individuals at the IUF who decided to make an international case out of Coke...
...obstruction of union organizing/bargaining...
...Ultimately, this necessitates organizing the various departments...
...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...
...he Guatemalan case has shown that corporate campaigns and code demands, combined with strong local organizing, can be an important antidote to the unrestricted corporate expansion promoted by NAFTA and GATT...
...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 Honeywell, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) at Mexican Ford and Volkswagen plants...
...letter writing by thousands of people...
...In 1987, U.S...
...The private sector, and eventually the military, refused to support Serrano because they feared the loss of U.S...
...Without the strong local, the international campaign would have been meaningless, and without the international support, the union would have been destroyed...
...All of these plants can be visualized as "departments" of a single global factory...
...The Coke union's perseverance was also the result of large-scale collective actions: mobilizations by the majority of Coke workers...
...n mid-1975, 150 workers organized a union at a Coca Cola bottling plant in Guatemala City...
...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...
...unions often organized abroad under U.S...
...union supporters have employed new means to respond to these new issues...
...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...
...The army really doesn't care what happens to Korean or North American firms, and we should take advantage of this to quietly build union strength," stated one labor activist...
...At Lunafil and Inexport, GLEP helped the workers gain reinstatement and maintain union recognition...
...Even though the incipient maquila unions remain fragile, GLEP, Guatemalan labor organizers, and a representative of the ILGWU are working to approach other maquiladora workers in an effort to encourage them to organize...
...workers, and encourage U.S...
...In fact, Coke had sold them the franchise so they could milk it dry...
...informal economy posed problems that extended international solidarity beyond the Coca Cola model...
...At the Lunafil thread plant in 1987, and the U.S.owned Inexport maquiladora in 1988, the owners locked out all union members...
...The decades-old "imagining" of class militancy as male really backfires in the new global economy--even if it hadn't before...
...corporate behavior and, on behalf of Playknits' union, GLEP was able to arrange negotiations in New York between union representatives and the company...
...By the mid-1980s, not only was the labor movement small and plagued with the traumas that state terror constantly reproduces, but existing Guatemalan industry had slithered into crisis due to lower revenues and increased debt payments...
...They are owned by citizens from Guatemala and other countries, notably Korea...
...Workingclass internationalism is not a utopian vision, but a bread and margarine, rice and beans issue...
...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...
...The approximately 100,000 workers they employ are primarily young women-some as young as eleven years of age...
...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...
...The labor-rights strategy is also an essential political approach that requires the collaboration of unions on both sides of any border...
...As the PVH and other Guatemalan examples suggest, success will eventually require organiz- mno nll nf the onmninv' "dIPn:rtments" around the world...
...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...
...department," for example, after a particular garment is designed, workers size the model, then mark and cut the cloth into component parts of the shirt...
...The strategies protect the hard-fought-for rights recognized by the International Labor Organization, now encoded in the labor legislation of most nations...
...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...
...government...
...They enable unions and supporters across borders to effectively fight the elimination of wage equity, health and safety protections, and union rights...
...Take the world's largest shirt maker headquartered in New Jersey, Phillips Van Heusen (PVH...
...The lesson is that international secretariats, even social-democratic ones like the IUF, cannot singlehandedly build a large and expansive global campaign...
...The garment is then shipped back to the United States where it is marketed...
...Such organizations operate outside political regimes, command enormous resources, affect the daily lives of millions of people, and have no public accountability...
...From late 1979 to mid1980, 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...
...Building a new labor internationalism is a task fraught with difficulties...
...Accelerating pressure on contract purchasers Sears, J.C...
Vol. 28 • March 1995 • No. 5
