While the employers claimed that it was simply a trick by the workers to get more pay, doctors insisted it was caused by poor ventilation coupled with undernourishment. It said 40 percent of employees were physically punished by pushing, beatings, blows on the head, whipping and being made to wait under a burning sun. Fighting trade unions Governments make almost no effort to inspect for violations. Fines are nominal. Consistent with the philosophy of neoliberalism, maquilas everywhere actively fight all attempts to form trade unions.
Spies report on any efforts even to get together to discuss problems.
Suspected leaders are fired and blacklisted. Members of the National Labor Committee, a human rights advocacy group based in New York, posing as investors, visited a Best Form maquila in Honduras in 1992. Identifying themselves as U.S. entrepreneurs, they asked questions about labor relations. In the summer of 1998, the workers in Camisas Modernas, a Phillips-Van Heusen maquila, made history when the company signed a labor contract, the only one in Guatemala. The victory was short-lived.