Up Against the Open Shop - the Hidden Story of Silicon Valley's High-Tech Workers

[katty]

more:
http://www.truth-out.org/up-against-open-shop-hidden-story-silicon-valleys-high-tech-workers68167

EXCERPT:

Unions have called the electronics industry "unorganizable." Corporations like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and National Semiconductor told their workers for years that the company regarded them as a family and that they needed no union. Healthy bottom lines, they said, would guarantee rising living standards and secure jobs. Economists painted a picture of the electronics industry as a massive industrial engine fueling economic growth, benefiting workers and communities alike.

The promises were worthless. Today, many of those giants of the industry own no factories at all, having sold them to contract manufacturers that build computers and make chips in locations from China to Hungary. In the factories that remain in the Valley, labor contractors like Manpower have become the formal employers, relieving the big brands of any responsibility for the workers who make the products bearing their labels.

While living standards rise for a privileged elite at the top of the workforce, they've dropped for thousands of workers on the production line. Tens of thousands of workers have been dropped off the lines entirely, as production was moved out of the Valley to other states and countries. Companies long ago eliminated their no-layoff pledge. Permanent jobs became temporary and then disappeared entirely. The image of the clean industry was undermined by toxic contamination of the Valley's water supply and a high occurrence of chemically induced industrial illness.

[RKP5637]

1. Yep! Quite true. n/t

[county worker]

2. I use to have to go to Fremont CA for my job and back then there were help wanted banners

that were several stories long on all the buildings of the computer companies. I think that was in the late 90's.