Challenging the Chip: Labor rights and environmental justice in the global electronics industry Organizing and Advocacy for Health and Environmental Justice in the High-Tech Industry Presented at Global Production, Economic Development, and labor standards in the Information Technology Industry Guangzhou, China December, 2011 Ted Smith, Founder, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition; Electronics TakeBack Coalition; and International Campaign for Responsible Technology www.icrt.co
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Challenging the Chip:
Labor rights and environmental justice in the
global electronics industry
Organizing and Advocacy for Health and Environmental Justice
in the High-Tech Industry
Presented at Global Production, Economic Development, and labor
• From the beginning, high tech workers had to face an industry-wide anti-union policy. Robert Noyce, who participated in the invention of the transistor, and later became a co-founder of Intel Corp., declared that "remaining non-union is an essential for survival for most of our companies. If we had the work rules that unionized companies have, we'd all go out of business. This is a very high priority for management here. We have to retain flexibility in operating our companies. The great hope for our nation is to avoid those deep, deep divisions between workers and management which can paralyze action."
The First Effort - Organizing Semiconductor Workers
• The historic base for organizing activity among the high tech workforce for many years were the workers in the semiconductor plants. Starting in the early 1970s, workers began to form organizing committees affiliated to the UE in plants belonging to National Semiconductor, Siltec, Fairchild, Siliconix, Semimetals, and others. Most of these were semiconductor manufacturing plants, or factories which supplied raw materials to those plants.
• By the early 1980's, the UE Electronics Organizing Committee had grown to involve a signed-up core membership of over 500 workers, who were participants in a number of union campaigns.
• In the mid 70's, a small group of people started meeting to discuss concerns over the chemical-handling aspects of the semiconductor industry and what might be done to raise these issues publicly. The group was called ECOSH, Electronics Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. ECOSH members included electronics workers, occupational nurses, attorneys, industrial hygienists, engineering and medical students, labor, environmental and religious leaders.
History of organizing for better conditions
• Organized an effort to ban the use of TCE
• Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health (SCCOSH) was formally organized in 1978. ECOSH continued as a SCCOSH project into the early 1980s, gaining recognition for a vigorous and largely successful campaign to ban TCE as well as energetic support and advocacy for many workers trying to win better conditions for themselves and co-workers.
History of organizing for better conditions
• Another early SCCOSH project was
Injured Workers United, a support group
for workers already affected by chemical
exposures, trying to secure fair
compensation, decent medical care and
retraining. The Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition (SVTC) also started out as an
early project of SCCOSH in 1982.
CAL OSHA report in 1981
Toxic Trouble in Silicon Valley Newsweek 1984
New York Times – November 10, 1984
AMRC Handbook - 1985
The Reality of
High Tech Impact
• Semiconductor workers experience illness
rates 3 times greater than manufacturing
workers in other industries
• In 3 epidemiological studies, women who
worked in fabrication rooms were found to
have rates of miscarriage of 40% or more
above non-manufacturing workers
• Silicon Valley has more EPA Superfund sites
than any other area in the USA
Toxic Components in
electronic products
• Solvents, acids, photoresists, gases, etc used to make chips, disk drives, etc
• Lead and cadmium in circuit boards
• Lead in CRT monitors
• Brominated flame retardants on printed circuit boards, cables and plastic casing
• Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) cables
• Mercury switches, flat screens
Clean rooms and
miscarriages
“ new concerns … may prove a potential black eye for a high technology industry that … sought to portray itself as clean and with little impact on the environment.
Women exposed to certain chemicals … in the nation’s semiconductor factories face a significantly higher risk of miscarriage, a broad industry-financed study has found. The study is the 3rd in 4 years to find that … glycol ethers have toxic effects. “
Oct 12 and Dec. 4, 1992
Chip plants not safe in Scotland
Wall Street Journal
October 5, 1998
• SEMICONDUCTOR PLANTS AREN'T SAFE AND CLEAN By BILL RICHARDS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
• GREENOCK, Scotland -- At the Inverclyde Advice and Employment Rights Center here, two dozen women crowd around a table. In angry Scottish burrs, they recite a litany of medical problems: cancers, birth defects, multiple miscarriages.
IBM Corporate Mortality File http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626450
• IBM maintained records of 30,000 workers that
identified cause of death over 30 years
• Records were analyzed by Dr. Richard Clapp,
epidemiologist at Boston Univ.
• Breast cancer deaths in women at IBM were
2.42 times the expected number
• Similar findings for brain cancer, kidney cancer,
non-Hodgikins lymphoma
IBM settles chemical suit
January 23, 2001 Case involved
microchip site workers' son
• By Craig Wolf Poughkeepsie Journal A lawsuit described as the first to test claims that chemicals in a microchip plant could be harmful to people has been settled, the parties said Monday. IBM Corp. and attorneys for Zachary Ruffing, a 15-year-old whose parents both had worked in the 1980s at IBM's East Fishkill plant, confirmed that an agreement had been reached.
• Settlements typically involve payment by the defendant. Neither side would disclose what IBM or two chemical companies involved in the suit would pay.
• IBM said ''human factors'' played a role in the decision. It still denies guilt.
• ''I think it's an enormously important case, partly because of the really serious damage suffered by Zach Ruffing and his family, and partly because this is the first major test case of its kind involved the high-tech industry,'' said Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in San Jose, Calif.
Clean rooms and dirty secrets
Major malformations typically occur in 1-2% of US live births; 5-10% are CNS malformations. Thus, in 1000 live births 1-2 CNS malformations and under .5 hydrocephaly cases expected.
From 1980-89 <1000 children were born to clean room workers at 2 IBM sites with high miscarriage rates. At least three were born with hydrocephaly. Other CNS defects found in the group include spina bifida and microcephaly
Clouds in Silicon Valley New York Times
September 8, 2003
By Bob Herbert
“The pristine environment is for the
sake of the products, which can be
ruined by even a speck of dust. At the
same time, the hazardous chemicals
used in the process are capable of
doing devastating physical damage to
the workers.” http://www.computertakeback.com/news_and_resources/clouds_sv.cfm
Practice precaution: close the gap
between environmental and workplace
PELS
68 chemicals known to the State of California to
cause cancer or reproductive harm are totally
unregulated by Cal-OSHA or regulated only for non-
accountability in the global electronics industry.
We are united by our concern for the lifecycle
impacts of this industry on health, the
environment and workers' rights.
Soesterberg Principles
Electronic Sustainability Commitment
Each new generation of technical
improvements in electronic products
should include parallel and proportional
improvements in environmental, health
and safety as well as social justice
attributes. Adopted by the Trans-Atlantic Network for
Clean Production, May 16, 1999
Forward to
Challenging the Chip
• “We need a lot more “people’s histories” like those in this book. The stories of brave and creative women and men who fight back when their lives and their children’s lives are threatened. These are the stories of people challenging the corporate elite and speaking truth to power – whether the power be the corporations or the governments that allow these practices to continue. Such stories teach us that when people come together across traditional boundaries – geographic, political, racial, etcetera – they can actually change the world.” – Jim Hightower, former state elected official in Texas
ICRT delegation visits
National Semiconductor
Book tour at Beijing University
Consumer Education: The Story of Stuff & The Story of Electronics
• What is the Story of Stuff?
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects
communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of
Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production
and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a
huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a
more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it
just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
http://www.storyofstuff.com/
The Story of Electronics
This video explores the high-tech revolution's collateral damage—25 million tons of e-
waste and counting, poisoned workers and a public left holding the bill. Host Annie
Leonard takes viewers from the mines and factories where our gadgets begin to the
horrific backyard recycling shops in China where many end up. The film concludes
with a call for a green 'race to the top' where designers compete to make long-lasting,
toxic-free products that are fully and easily recyclable.