The minimum wage was increased to the equivalent of about $155 a month, up from $130, and the hotline was set up, but only eight inspectors have been added and 60 more are expected to be put in place this year. The monitoring program, which is slated to receive $2.7 million in U.S. funding, is set to start up in the next few months.

"You're going to have allegations [of labor abuses] until everything that we've been talking about is put in place, regretfully, until we have 120 inspectors, until we have adequate financing," Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, Jordan's ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview. "It just goes without saying that we all have to do more at every level, at the factory level, at the company level, at the host-state level, until we can eradicate what is obviously a scourge."

Jordan has done what it can with its limited resources, he said.

"One assumes that those leading the companies would be more sensitive to, one, Jordanian law, and two, to the humanitarian conditions of their own workers," said the ambassador. "As it transpired, we may have assumed wrongly. So we are learning."

The U.S. government has been involved because goods made in Jordan can gain duty-free entry to America under a free trade agreement with the Middle East country and a second arrangement under a U.S.-Israeli trade pact.

"Overall, we're very pleased with progress in Jordan," said a spokesman in the office of U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab. "Jordan has been responsive to [NLC] reports, investigating all of the allegations and addressing problems in factories. The U.S. government is providing assistance, as are international organizations, to help Jordan continue to build capacity so its Labor Ministry can continue to enforce its laws."

Fashion executives and government officials, while charging that some of the specific allegations in the NLC's work are dated or inaccurate, say the general thrust of its findings are usually on target. For his part, Kernaghan wonders how brands with codes of conduct and inspectors can miss abuses, such as the poor conditions he alleges persist in some Jordanian factories.