Why We Are Building a Global Movement to Challenge the ChipTed Smith
Features
OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2010
PUBLISHED BY ASIA MONITOR RESOURCE CENTRE LTD ☯ HONG KONG ☯ ISSUE 77 ☯ OCT 2010–DEC 2010
For more than four decades, people in Silicon Valley
in California, United States, have known that the manu-
facture of computer chips requires many toxic chemicals
and that workers have been getting sick from exposure
to those chemicals. At the same time, we’ve also known
that the electronics industry has built a ‘fi re wall’ against
unions and resisted efforts by workers to organize to pro-
tect their health, wages and working conditions. Lessons
learned in Silicon Valley need to be shared throughout
Asia since electronics manufacturing is now centred
there. Here are some key examples:
1. The right-to-know is essential! Information is
the best defense!
In Silicon Valley, as in Asia, electronics production
workers were not informed about the toxic hazards for
themselves and their families and since many were mi-
grant workers from rural areas, they had no way of know-
ing about these hazards. Early efforts in Silicon Valley
included documenting the chemical hazards, informing
workers through publications and a telephone ‘hotline’,
organizing victims into a support group called ‘Injured
Workers United’, and providing medical and legal sup-
port for affected workers. While electronics executives
were uniformly hostile to unions (people who tried
to organize unions were often fired and/or harassed),
organizing to protect workers’ health was more diffi cult
to suppress. While industry executives could complain
about the evils of unions, they found it more difficult to
discredit people coming together to organize for safer
working conditions.
2. The right to say no – The Campaign to end the
miscarriage of justice3
The growing awareness that toxic chemicals were
causing reproductive harm in the community gave rise to
a demand for additional health studies to assess the extent
of miscarriages and birth defects for electronics workers.
Three separate epidemiological studies all demonstrated
a high rate of miscarriages amongst semiconductor work-
ers, leading to the demand to ban the use of glycol ethers
and other reproductive toxins. Women began to demand
that they be provided a safe work place, particularly when
they were pregnant or contemplating pregnancy.
3. The right to act – Taking workers concerns
directly to the Semiconductor Industry
In 2002, after years of organizing in Silicon Valley
and other high-tech centres in the US, we organized an
international gathering to bring together people from
other parts of the world to share stories and strategies
and to form a common agenda. This is where we formed
the International Campaign for Responsible Technology
(ICRT).4 We were all energized to learn that we had much
in common and shared similar goals. We also realized
that we were facing the same opposition and denial
from industry offi cials who ignored and minimized the
concerns that we were witnessing. We decided to take
our unifi ed message directly to the source of the problem
– to the headquarters of the Semiconductor Industry As-
sociation (SIA), which is the trade association that acts
as the global lobby for the industry. We showed up as a
large group and confronted George Scalise, President of
the SIA, and made sure that he listened to the fi rst-hand
accounts from people from all around the world who
were suffering from cancer, birth defects, and abuses of
workers’ rights. We demanded that the industry protect
its workers wherever they are – in the US, Scotland, Tai-
wan, China, etc. But the industry is still a long way from
providing a safe workplace where workers can survive
with dignity and justice. These demands still need to be
acted upon all around.
4. Moving from reaction to precaution – why we
need to get ahead of the curve
One of the most difficult challenges of dealing
with the electronics industry is that it is both extremely
powerful and changes very rapidly. In little more than a
single generation, it has become one of the most domi-
nant economic engines on the planet and has developed
a wide variety of products that have become essential
to communications, defense as well as the consumer
economy. No wonder that governments compete for new
high-tech development and are uninterested in regulating
the ‘golden goose’ that sees itself as the gateway to the
future. Moreover, since it is still governed by ‘Moore’s
law’ (which proclaims that every 18 months each new
generation of technology will be twice as fast, twice as
small and twice as cheap),5 the industry changes so rap-
idly that by the time you fi gure out what the main chal-
lenges or hazards are, the technology has moved on to the
next generation and is creating new problems even before
the older ones have been understood or addressed.
If ever there was a poster child for the need for the
precautionary principle, the electronics industry presents
itself as Exhibit A! If we spend all of our effort trying to
clean up the messes created yesterday, we will never get
ahead of the curve. Likewise, if we always have to wait
for the ‘body count’ we will continue to be overwhelmed
by too many funerals. We need to develop better ways to
screen new materials before they are introduced into the
workplace and we need to establish increased bargaining
power to make sure that management listens to the con-
cerns of the workers rather than just give lip service.
to this most powerful industry. That’s why
it is essential that we build stronger links between our
various networks, especially the newly renamed (see Box,
p. 40) Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational and
Environmental Victims (ANROEV),8 the European Work
Hazards Network (EWHN)9 and the National Council on
Occupational Safety and Health (COSH)10 in the U.S.
5. Forming worker-community-environmental
coalitions is necessary.
Early organizing efforts to expose the toxic underside
of electronics production in Silicon Valley was essential
in building awareness and piercing the ‘clean industry’
mythology, but it was the linkage to community and
environmental pollution that really got people mobilized
to make the industry more accountable. Even when the
local media began to cover the growing occupational ill-
nesses, most people still ignored it if they weren’t directly
and personally affected. But when the toxic chemicals
leaked into our groundwater (which is our drinking wa-
ter supply) and residents started giving birth to babies
with serious birth defects, the residents came together
to demand that the industry change its practices. And
often it was the workers in the lead, who were suffering
from ‘double exposure’ both on the job as well as in
the community. That’s when we started passing laws to
provide greater protections and established
the legal right-to-know about which toxic
chemicals were being used in which fac-
tory. We made the point that there was no
difference between occupational health
and environmental health – that people
were getting sick from exposure to the
same toxic chemicals, whether it was in
the workplace or in the community. It was
the combined power of the broad coalition
that was able to generate enough people
power to make changes.
Now that the industry has become
truly global, we need to further develop
our people’s networks to also become
truly global. More than ever, it’s true that
an injury to one is an injury to all – that’s
why the cancer cluster at Samsung affects
us all; and that’s why the rash of suicides at
Foxconn7 is a tragedy for all of us. And it is
only through our combined resources and
common strategies that we stand a chance
to bring accountability and sustainability
to this most powerful industry. That’s why
it is essential that we build stronger links between our
various networks, especially the newly renamed (see Box,
p. 40) Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational and
Environmental Victims (ANROEV),8 the European Work
Hazards Network (EWHN)9 and the National Council on
Occupational Safety and Health (COSH)10 in the U.S.
☯
Endnotes
See Eds. Ted Smith, David A. Sonnenfeld, David Naguib
Pellow, and Leslie A. Byster, Challenging the Chip:
Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global
Electronics Industry, Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2006.
http://dbacon.igc.org/Unions/04hitec2.htm
http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/hf/kt2b69r7hf/fi les/
kt2b69r7hf.pdf
http://www.icrt.co/
http://www.ewhn-riga.org/conferencereport/presentations/
infomeetings/IM17%20Smith%20Challenging%20the%2
0chip%20info%20meeting%20slides.ppt
http://www.causes.com/causes/546307-samsung-account-
ability-campaign
http://www.ituc-csi.org/foxconn-suicides-governments-
and.html
www.anroav.org
http://www.ewhn.eu/favicon.ico
http://www.coshnetwork.org/sites/default/fi les/favicon.jpg
A delegation from the founding conference of International Campaign for Responsible
Technology in November 2002, visiting the National Semiconductor factory in Santa Clara,
California. Photo: Ted Smith
☯
Endnotes
See Eds. Ted Smith, David A. Sonnenfeld, David Naguib
Pellow, and Leslie A. Byster, Challenging the Chip:
