A first-ever victory for an independent union in Tijuana has been turned sour by a government agency's refusal to accept the results of an election judged clean by the agency's own representative. North of the border, supporters of the workers have been active in more than 25 cities, and one group has filed a complaint under NAFTA. PNS associate editor David Bacon reports from Tijuana. He is a former union organizer who writes widely on labor and immigration.

TIJUANA - Three factory workers have lived without food since November 20 in a makeshift camp outside the state building here. They are protesting the betrayal of democracy.

Armando Hernandez Roman, Miguel Angel Sanchez Murillo and Fernando Flores Cruz, have all been fired by their employer, Han Young de Mexico. They are leaders of a movement to establish the first recognized independent union in the Tijuana maquiladoras.

"We will not accept the denial of our right to join an independent union of our own choosing," explains Miguel Angel Meza, a fourth worker, who began the hunger strike with the others but was forced by his doctor to abandon his fast after six days.

Han Young workers won an unprecedented victory October 6, when they voted for a union affiliated with the independent Authentic Labor Front (FAT) -- the first time an independent union has won the right to represent workers at a maquiladora factory on the U.S.-Mexican border.

However, on November 10 the Tijuana office of the National Conciliation and Arbitration Board (CAB) refused to certify the results of that election.

The hunger strikers are demanding that the government respect the vote and certify the independent union.

The October election capped a battle pitting the workers, the FAT and their supporters in the U.S. against Han Young and the huge, South Korean-owned Hyundai Corp. industrial complex here. Han Young produces parts for truck trailers and shipping containers that are finished in the Hyundai facility.

The workers' central demand is that the company deal directly with their elected representatives instead of the factory's company union. When the Han Young plant opened five years ago, management signed an agreement with the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC). The CROC, like other Mexican labor federations except the FAT, is allied with the PRI, the country's governing party.

About 700 of the city's 890 maquiladoras have contracts with the CROC or similar federations, according to Jose Angel Penaflor, a Tijuana labor attorney representing the FAT. "These contracts institutionalize a system of low wages, which the government uses as a way of attracting foreign investment," he says.

Han Young workers have threatened that system. "Employers and the company unions are fighting to the death to keep the company-union system," Penaflor adds. "Since 21 percent of all workers in Mexico work in maquiladoras, there's a great deal at stake."

In response to petitions from both the Han Young workers and the CROC, the regional chief of the CAB started to set up the voting process -- but was then dismissed from his post by the governor of Baja California state.

The election was administered instead by Carlos Perez Astorga, who illegally allowed company supervisors and recently-hired casual workers to vote. Even so, 55 votes went to the FAT and only 32 to the CROC. Perez announced, "This election was free from any irregularities." Despite this, the local CAB officially refused to certify the results, holding that the particular FAT affiliate the Han Young workers voted to join could not represent them, although that union represents auto-parts workers elsewhere in Mexico.

The CAB also found that the election only expressed the workers' sentiments at the one particular moment that they voted -- a ruling that could invalidate every union election held in Mexico.

This led the San Diego-based Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers to file a formal complaint in the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement alleging collusion between Mexican officials and Han Young management, and accusing the Mexican government of failing to enforce its own labor laws. The AFL-CIO has been assisting the San Diego committee.

Mary Tong, executive director of the committee, has been barred from any legal proceeding, press conference or other political activity in Tijuana. A representative of the Mexico's National Immigration Institute, she said, "told me that if I showed up at any event like this, even if I didn't say anything, I would be deported."

Sparked by the San Diego committee, a coalition of labor and human-rights groups has organized activities in more than 25 cities, calling on the Hyundai Corp. to ensure that its contractor respects the election results.

Support has grown in Tijuana as well. At the beginning of December, 58 Han Young employees refused to go in to work for two days, and have vowed to keep disrupting production until the company acknowledges their union. Activists at other Hyundai contracting plants have collected money on the plant floor.

"We will stay here until our democratic decision is respected," Meza says.