With the advent of multi-company codes and monitoring and verification systems, the relationship between union organizing and code initiatives could become more complicated. Whether codes and global auditing and certification systems strengthen or weaken worker organizing depends a great deal on how unions and NGOs intervene in these processes. Demanding transparency and more access to information, challenging unjust factory certifications, and using codes to protect workers attempting to organize are possible strategies. Debates continue over who should do the audits and what their relationship should be with the companies whose suppliers' practices are being audited. In a few instances, companies, such as Nike and Liz Claiborne, have mandated or contracted local NGOs or respected Northern health and safety activists to carry out audits of particular factories.
Many Southern groups are very critical of the private sector social auditing model.
They question whether Northern social auditing firms, with little or no human rights experience, will be able to determine whether workers rights are being violated. Northern auditors will not be trusted by workers, they say, because workers will view them as company representatives. In the Netherlands, a foundation with equal representation from unions, NGOs, retailers and manufacturers will train and hire external monitors who will be responsible to the foundation rather than to companies. Most civil society groups in both the North and South believe global monitoring and verification systems will only be successful if workers are knowledgeable about and actively involved in these processes.