A UNITEd Effort

Garment worker and union activist Ramon Flores says he had a single request after getting the word that he was one of a group of employees being fired by Guess Inc.: He asked that the personnel manager, not one of the security guards posted nearby, be the one to walk him out to the front gate.

“I wanted to leave with dignity. I didn’t want to leave like a thief,” said the 42-year-old Flores, a warehouse worker at Guess for nearly 3 1/2 years before being let go last summer.

Today, Flores not only has his sense of dignity, he also has his job back, the result of one successful legal battle in a raging war between UNITE, the strongest union in the garment industry, and Guess, the biggest clothing manufacturer based in Southern California.

What’s more, Flores is a mainstay in a gritty band of eight to 10 low-wage immigrant workers emerging as central figures in that labor conflict, an intensifying fight that could shake up the region’s vast apparel-manufacturing industry.

The activist group’s members, all originally from Mexico or Central America, are the inside-the-company leaders in a campaign to turn Guess’ collection of downtown warehouses into a union shop.

Ranging from their early 20s to their mid-40s, these worker-activists include single mothers and married fathers, outspoken agitators as well as quietly resolute organizers.

And, like Flores, all were fired by Guess in August only to win reinstatement last month. Guess took them back in time to head off a complaint by the National Labor Relations Board, which was about to accuse the company of illegally firing the workers in retaliation for their union activities.

Under the settlement, which already is the subject of a new legal squabble, the company did not admit to any violations of its workers’ federally guaranteed rights to organize. Guess executives refused to be interviewed for this story, but in response to written questions, the company issued statements denying doing anything to oppose the union.

The company said the dismissals cited by UNITE and the labor board were “nothing more than a seasonal adjustment to employment.” In a general comment about employee and union grievances, Guess added that “historically their allegations and statements about Guess have consistently proven to be false.”

Still, when Guess restored the worker-activists’ jobs, Flores and his companions came back as heroes in the eyes of many of their co-workers.

On their first day back, Flores and his fellow worker-activists, all of whom speak little or no English, were treated to a lunchtime celebration. Their co-workers brought in takeout from a nearby El Pollo Loco restaurant, and they hung a paper sign on the wall reading, “Bienvenidos Companeros UNITE” (Welcome UNITE Companions).

Emboldened by the recent turn of events, some of the workers have started wearing UNITE T-shirts or buttons to work.

The reinstated activists inspire their co-workers, union supporters and officials maintain, because they stood up for their rights in the face of threats by Guess management--and won.

“They’re really a symbol of leadership,” said Max Torres, a UNITE staffer helping run the organizing campaign. “These people are giving the others a lesson that the company needs to respect their rights.”

Even though their chances of victory appear far better today than when the union drive went public late in July, the worker-activists and union officials still regard their effort as a David-versus-Goliath struggle.

Guess’ public denial notwithstanding, UNITE supporters say they are being fought fiercely in their efforts to win union representation for the 500 to 600 warehouse and production workers. Their opponents, they say, are the wealthy brothers who control Guess: Maurice, Paul and Armand Marciano.

The labor battle is being waged on other fronts as well. UNITE officials have tried to recruit, along with the Guess employees, many of the roughly 3,000 to 5,000 garment sewers and cutters at contracting shops retained by Guess in Southern California.

Moreover, the Guess effort--one of several Southern California campaigns vying for the attention of national AFL-CIO labor leaders meeting in Los Angeles this week--is emblematic of the organizing emerging among immigrant workers in the region. Although Los Angeles still has a lower percentage of union workers than big Eastern and Midwestern cities such as New York and Detroit, labor activists have been encouraged by successful recruiting drives in recent years here among immigrant drywallers and janitors.

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The future of organized labor in Los Angeles, however, wasn’t on the mind of Guess employee Maria “Lety” Vasquez when she decided to get involved with the union two years ago.

Vasquez, a 38-year-old married mother of three, said she was miffed over a personal issue: The company cut her from full time to part time and reduced her pay from $6.50 to $5 an hour.

“They gave me no reason. Nothing,” she said.

Union activists say it was a typical move for Guess; they complain that the company routinely bounces employees from department to department or even fires them without explanation or regard for their job performance.

Last summer, Vasquez felt her situation might be getting better when she was restored to full time, albeit still at $5 an hour.

But just weeks later she was told to go to the lunchroom with eight to 10 other workers. She said that at that point, with security guards positioned nearby, a personnel manager informed all of the workers that they were being let go because of a company reorganization.

Vasquez, who was pregnant at the time with her third child, said she protested her dismissal.

“I said I was pregnant and you can’t fire me now,” she said. “But she [the personnel manager] said there was no law that protects you for being pregnant.”

Vasquez’s baby, a boy, arrived seven weeks ago, and last week Vasquez returned to work under the labor board settlement.

Vasquez, a short, friendly woman with a warm smile, has also resumed her mission of talking up the union among her co-workers, during lunch breaks and whenever else she gets the chance. At times, though, the job is tough.

Many workers are intimidated by management and fearful, Vasquez said, that they could lose their jobs for supporting UNITE, whose full name is the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.

“They’ll talk with me, but if I say anything about the union, they change the subject,” she said.

Vasquez and other worker-activists say Guess has made a number of changes in recent months--including renovating the company lunchroom, throwing a Christmas party with music and dancing, and offering English classes--to placate workers and blunt the union campaign. Guess managers “are buying off people,” Vasquez said.

Still, Vasquez feels that support for the union is growing, and she is buttressed by the support of her husband, Jose Galan, who works in the apparel business as a truck driver and sewer.

“She’s not fighting just to defend her own rights, but also for many other people who work in the garment industry,” said Galan.

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Some authorities fear that a big victory by UNITE would prompt further union campaigns in the Southern California apparel industry--the region’s second-biggest manufacturing employer and, in clothing production nationally, No. 2 only to New York. A spread of unionization, these authorities contend, would speed up an incipient exodus of apparel production from the region.

Guess, in fact, announced last month that it was moving most of the production work that had been performed by its local contractors to Mexico and South America, although it says the shift is due to economic factors unrelated to the union campaign.

But other experts contend that unionization would prompt clothing companies to invest more heavily in modern, labor-saving technology. Although that would probably eliminate some jobs in the short term, it could also safeguard the future of Southern California’s apparel industry and create higher-paying production work.

In any case, few objective observers dispute the need to raise pay and improve working conditions, particularly at contractor sewing shops, where so many sweatshop abuses have been discovered.

According to the Labor Department, those problems have surfaced in Guess’ contractor shops too.

In the fall, the department inspected about 20 Guess contractors and found that more than a third were violating minimum-wage and overtime laws. In all, the affected workers were owed more than $200,000 in back wages. As a result, Guess was put on probation with the agency’s Trendsetter List, a roster of apparel manufacturers and retailers judged to be taking extra steps to avoid doing business with sweatshops.

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Even Guess’ own employees sometimes just scrape by financially. That’s why Hilda Aracely Castaneda says she took up the union cause.

Castaneda, a 34-year-old single mother, says she has never earned more than $5.40 an hour in her three years as a warehouse worker for Guess.

“Thank God I don’t have any emergencies. It just pays for the basics,” she said.

Castaneda says her main financial goal is to send about $200 a month, more than a week’s take-home pay, to her mother and 14-year-old daughter in Guatemala. But paying for basic necessities, including $250 a month in rent to share a Huntington Park apartment, makes that a tough goal to keep.

Her pay, union activists say, is fairly typical among Guess employees. They say workers generally receive somewhere from $5 to $6 an hour, just above the current minimum wage of $4.75, for jobs involving such physically demanding and repetitive tasks as packing boxes and unloading trucks.

What galls people like Castaneda is how little she earns despite the fortunes being reaped by the Marcianos. The three brothers made a combined $8 million in 1995, the latest year for which their compensation has been publicly disclosed. The company itself reported net earnings of $43.3 million on revenue of $486.7 million that year; profit for the first nine months of 1996 was $40.5 million on revenue of $411.9 million.

“At times they tell us we did a good job, but we don’t get raises even if they make millions,” Castaneda said.

Another grievance is health insurance. It’s available, but to receive family coverage, workers say they must pay $200 a month in premiums, $5 co-payments for doctors’ visits and 20% of medical charges. Castaneda, who is pregnant, worries about how she’ll pay for insurance coverage for her baby.

Like Flores and Vasquez, Castaneda also chafes at what she portrays as a pressure-cooker atmosphere in which workers constantly fear losing their jobs.

She was at the fateful employee meeting in August where, UNITE officials say, Paul Marciano told workers through an interpreter that he would close or move the company if they continued to support the union.

Marciano, who was born in Algeria and later lived in France, “said he came to this country to make money, not to have someone take it from him,” recalled Castaneda. “He said that before accepting a union, he would rather die.”

Castaneda said there also were repeated meetings with managers in which workers were pressured to oppose the union. UNITE accused company executives of interrogating workers about their union activities and threatening to compile a blacklist of union supporters to prevent them from ever getting another job in this country.

Under the settlement with the labor board, Guess did not acknowledge any such actions and pledged to not make such threats.

Still, Castaneda said, she just learned anew of how quick the company is to discipline or get rid of employees it considers too troublesome or highly paid. Slightly more than a week ago, almost exactly a month after she was reinstated as part of the labor board settlement, Castaneda was suspended for two days. Her offense, she says, was leaving her job for a moment to start heating up a lunchtime meal in the employee microwave oven--an activity that, union activists claim, most employees are routinely allowed to perform.

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By all accounts, the union-organizing drive faces enormous obstacles and could drag on for years. Guess might eventually be able to bring back some of the work now being shifted to sewing contractors in Latin America. But for the time being, the company’s move means fewer jobs and fewer potential union members in Southern California--and more workers who may be too worried about their job security to get involved with a union.

Moreover, the Marcianos are known as brutally tough adversaries. From the mid-1980s through 1990, they slugged it out in a legendary legal battle for control of their company against rival jeans maker Jordache. The Marcianos--including another brother, Georges, who had been the company’s chief executive--ultimately won. But that victory didn’t come until after a House subcommittee accused the Marcianos of exerting “improper influence” over the Internal Revenue Service office in Los Angeles, cozying up to criminal investigators to instigate a government probe of Jordache.

Another hurdle in front of the union supporters is that UNITE, a financially robust union whose assets include lucrative New York real estate, so far has barely managed to make a dent in the Southland. It is believed to represent at most 2% to 3% of the 132,000 workers in in the apparel industry in Southern California.

And UNITE is still grappling with internal tensions 1 1/2 years after it was formed through the merger of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.

Those divisions surfaced in Los Angeles late in January with the resignation of David Young, an International Ladies Garment Workers Union veteran who started plotting the seemingly longshot Guess campaign in late 1994 and had directed it ever since. He was replaced last week by 28-year-old Carla Naranjo, who comes from the Amalgamated side of the union and who most recently headed UNITE’s organizing efforts in Texas.

Sources close to the union say Naranjo will be given the money to substantially step up organizing efforts. But it remains unclear whether UNITE leaders still have the degree of commitment that Young had to organize the contractor shop workers, along with the Guess workers.

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The thought of a long, hard labor battle at Guess doesn’t worry worker-activist Flores. He has been through struggles before.

Flores, a serious-minded man sporting a light beard, during the 1970s and ‘80s was a politically active university student in his native Nicaragua, a supporter of the leftist Sandinista government.

He said he left the country in 1985 and came to the United States illegally from Mexico at the behest of his mother, who feared that the rightist Contra rebels would try to kill him.

Flores, now a legal resident and married to a nurse with a union job, isn’t in the dire financial straits that some of his cohorts are. He regards the dispute at Guess as a matter of worker rights and dignity, as well as economics.

“We work with no job security,” Flores said. “They treat us like we are machines to be exploited. When we get tired, they just lay us off.”

All the same, he takes satisfaction in being reinstated at Guess, viewing it as a victory against the brothers controlling the company, whom he considers exploiters of poor workers.

Winning the job back, Flores said, “was a great achievement because it was as if we slapped the faces of all the Marcianos. Many people lost the fear they had.”

When he returned, Flores said, “one of the workers shook his hand and said, ‘This is something the Marcianos have never had happen before.’ ”