The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy

8. Beyond Silicon Valley: The Social and Environmental Costs of the Global Microelectronics Industry

Beyond Silicon Valley The Social and Environmental Costs of the Global Microelectronics Industry Introduction Near the end of the year 2000, high-tech industry leaders from around the world held a conference in Seattle titled “Creating Digital Dividends .” The premise underlying this gathering was the notion that “market drivers” could connect all six billion of the world’s people through the e-economy, thereby providing better education, health care, and wealth to even the poorest of communities. Iqbal Z. Quadir, a conference attendee from Bangladesh, claimed, “Poor people are poor because they’re stuck in an environment that is stifling. . . . If they are connected , the environment changes and everyone’s life gets better.” Many high-technology executives, politicians, and global development proponents who benefit from an expanding global economy freely endorse such sentiments. For instance, Bernard Drum, an official at the World Bank in Jakarta who attended the Seattle conference, predicted, “people who do take advantage of those opportunities [from the e-economy] will be ahead of the game.”1 High technology is often presented as a panacea for many of the world’s social ills. Consequently, those who create this technology are our saviors, modern-day knights in shining armor.2 Yet, as with Silicon Valley, the electronics industry’s globalization has also produced global occupational and environmental hazards. Ironically , immigrants trying to escape harsh and hazardous working conditions in developing nations find themselves in similar situations in the United States. Unfortunately, exposure to hazards, unstable or temporary labor, “homework” or “piecework,” and strict gender, race, and class segregation are endemic to the microelectronics industry as a 8 169 whole. While “globalization” or global capitalism is lauded for breaking down barriers (e.g., trade barriers, nation-state borders, cultural divisions ), many other barriers are maintained and erected by this process. For instance, the flow of information regarding human health and environmental impacts of chemical exposure in the high-tech sector is strictly guarded. Often, what little is known in one country is not shared with workers and regulators in other nations. Consequently, transnational corporations (TNCs), under the guise of safeguarding “trade secrets,” impose embargoes on information that is imperative for the protection of worker and community health and ecosystems. The globalization of workplace hazards continues to spread as a result of the immense power of these industry giants. Workers’ voices are constantly minimized or denied altogether through the industry’s tight regulation of information. While many readers might expect this sort of unilateral and dictatorial policy making from firms in Third World nations, we must remember that many of these unsavory practices were first perfected in Silicon Valley , USA. In addition, TNCs contribute to the increasing inequality that divides workers by race/ethnicity, class, and gender, and they maintain the intense economic dependence of “developing” nations on electronic exports . The structure of this industry serves to maintain First World economic imperialism, rather than fulfilling promises of stronger freedoms or democracies. Global Reach: The Transnational Electronics Industry More than nine hundred semiconductor fabrication plants (fabs) are in operation worldwide. Electronics manufacturing has expanded from Silicon Valley and the high-tech corridor along Route 128 near Boston (and a few areas in western Europe and Japan) to the southwestern United States and to nations throughout Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean.3 For example, in 1995, IBM (USA) had plants in 25 different nations and on 5 continents, and reported earnings of $35.6 billion; NEC (Japan) had plants in 26 nations across 5 continents, netting $20.5 billion in revenue; Hewlett-Packard (USA) operated plants in 17 nations and 4 continents and took in $25 billion; Fujitsu (Japan) had facilities in 17 countries and earned $24.4 billion; and Phillips (Netherlands ) made computer hardware in 13 countries and raked in $22.4 bil170 | Chapter 8 lion.4 The continued global expansion of high-tech production, along with initiatives such as the establishment of Free Trade Zones, has had a dramatic impact on the lives of workers worldwide. Human migration is one of the results of this globalization. Migration is a form of labor mobility sustained by interpersonal networks bridging points of origin and points of destination.5 Transnational corporations, including the electronics industry, many times function as the necessary “bridge” for immigrants seeking to move from one region to another. Despite the U.S. government’s continuing efforts to restrict the flow of immigration inside its borders...