[sacw] sacw dispatch #2 (24 Sept.99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #2

24 September 1999

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#1. "The Bhopal Gas Tragedy: The Saga is Not Over"

#2. South Asian Workers in Silicon Valley

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#1.

<center>

</center>Chaitime's News channel features "The Bhopal Gas Tragedy: The
Saga is Not Over"

<<http://www.chaitime.com/curre/rewind/rewind.asp>

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy: The Saga is Not Over

<color><param>0000,0000,FFFF</param> </color>On December 2 1984, the
citizens of Bhopal experienced a nightmare that, even to this day, they
can't forget. The gas leak that took place in Bhopal on that night goes
down in world history as one of the worst industrial tragedies ever.

The accident, now known as the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, started when a tank
containing methyl isocyanate (MIC) at the Union Carbide India Limited,
began to leak. The chemical is used to produce insecticides. According
to the official documentation of the Madhya Pradesh State government,
approximately 3,800 of the city's population of 800,000 died
immediately. About 300,000 were injured and 8,000 have died since. Most
of the people died while they where asleep, and some people still die
due to it. Yes, the aftereffects of the gas leak have not ended.
Hundreds of men, women and children continue to suffer from fatal
diseases. To make matters worse, government aid and rehabilitation
policies have simply not addressed the disaster in its entirety.

Inquiries into the accident have revealed that it happened due to a
combination of both human and mechanical errors. It is assumed that
water entered the MIC tank. The mixture of the two elements caused an
intense chemical reaction, and strong heat developed. Soon, the safety
valve of the tank burst due to an increase in pressure. The discharge
was so furious that the concrete coating around the tank also burst.
About 20-30 tons of MIC were released in just one hour. The soaring
moisture content (aerosol) in the leakage evaporated and gave rise to a
heavy vapor, which quickly sank to the ground.

The fact that it was a clear night with a weak wind caused a slow
dilution of gas and thus led to acute effects at great distances. The
extent of poisoning and injuries was determinded by people's proximity
to the tank area. Research has shown that lethal injuries took place up
to a radius of 2 miles.

It was discovered later that a section of the safety apparatus at the
factory had been non-operational for four months. When an alarm was
finally sounded an hour later, the toxic fumes had traveled too far and
irreparable damage to human life had already been done.

Among the several ailments that continue to haunt the public, are
partial or complete blindness, menstrual problems in women, asthma,
gastrointestinal disorders, impaired immune systems, rise in
spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, children with genetic defects and
post-traumatic stress disorders.

It turns out that health officials were not informed of the poisonous
nature of the chemicals used at the factory. Neither were there any
crisis management programs. Although Union Carbide denied liability, in
1989 the Supreme Court agreed to a settlement payment of $470 million
by Union Carbide to the survivors of the tragedy. The legal war between
the two sides was given extensive media coverage, but eventually died
out. With it, the government's assurances of relief and rehabilitation
trickled down. Consequently, several disaster relief bodies have been
set up. These agencies have been providing support to victims in terms
of medical treatment and vocational training. Primary among these
organizations are the Bhopal Gas Peedi Mahila Udyog Sangthan, the
largest organization for gas victims, the Bhopal Gas and Information
Group and the Zahreeli Gas Ka Sangarsh Morcha.

Victims of the tragedy tried to boycott earlier elections, in protest,
but this time around, one cannot even hear victims' voices. They have
not resigned to their fate. Nevertheless, they seem to have given up
all hopes of government aid to restart a normal life.

The incident only strives to assert the importance of industrial
safety, health awareness and disaster management in developing
countries.

_________________________

#2.

[ 23 septembre, 1999] 

Next in Line: South Asian Workers in Silicon Valley

by Raj Jayadev

"Hurry up Line 1! You are not here to talk, you are here to work!

GEE-VAAAN WHAT'S THE HOLD UP?!" The tone and ferocity of her words
always

carried a certain violence. They were intended to elicit immediate
obedience, the

way a prison guard uses a night-stick, or a slave master would a whip.
Jivan

had only been at the plant for a few months, but he had grown
accustomed to the

daily harassment by management, so he simply did what was commanded of
him

and went back to stocking the conveyer belt with printers. "You know,
in

India workers would not stand for this treatment", Jivan told me while

hiding a rebellious smirk from the supervisor who just finished barking
at

us.

Jivan and I had taken a minute's rest to talk about our lives

outside the plant. It was a minute we felt was well-earned and
certainly

due to us. Our line had met our daily quota of 846 components already,
yet

our only reward was the humiliating scolding from the supervisor and
the

promise of more back-breaking work at even faster pace. It was near the
end

of another monotonous and dehumanizing day on the assembly line in
Silicon

Valley.

Jivan had come to the US a little under a year ago from Kerela where he
ran

a metal shop making machinery parts like bolts and screws. Just as my

parents did over 30 years ago, he had come to America for the
educational

opportunities of his children. Jivan says that he plans on returning
to

India after his two boys finish school, just as my parents promised

themselves when they first came from India. In the highly volatile and

unstable labor market of what is being touted as the new economy, Jivan
has

found himself trying to stay afloat and provide for his family by
entering

into the only work which has remained consistent to the Valley for the
past

twenty years: low wage electronics assembly. In the Valley, low wage

assembly and manufacturing has been the unstated anchor of
technological

and economic growth. Perhaps explaining its rather hushed existence, it
is a

labor niche which has been created and reserved for immigrant workers
of

color. It is a niche which sits at the bottom of the rung, a place
where

others would not and do not go for work. Although it is grueling work

physically, mentally, and emotionally, it offers sub-livable
compensation

to its hidden workforce. The work is ironically the base of one of the
most

prolific profit generating industries in modern times and is located in
one

of the world's most powerful financial hubs.

A profound characteristic popular psyche has accepted about the
Information

Age is the presumption that technology is produced by some sort of
divine

intervention-so advanced that it requires no actual assembly or

manufacturing, features its predecessors of the Industrial Era found
so

essential. Yet every computer, printer, and technological wizardry in

between bought at the local Radio Shack is birthed in what is usually
a

very inglorious assembly line production site. Electronics production
requires

so much labor, that the high-tech industry employs one out of every
five wage

earners in the Valley (Economic Development Department). For the over

200,000 people laboring in the manufacturing sector, 70% of whom are
Asian

(San Jose Mercury April 16,1999), working conditions do not match up to
the

industries public image. Contrary to the charismatic Intel commercials

displaying workers in fabrication labs dancing around in choreographed

bliss, the real work environment in anything but a party. Fabrication
labs

and other high-tech production sites have proven to be dangerous,
abusive,

and shockingly never seem to play danceable 70's disco. In actuality,
the

clean reputation of the modern high-tech industry is riddled with some
of

the most archaic expressions of naked exploitation. Electronics

manufacturing plants and their ill-fated surrounding low income

neighborhoods are saturated with carcinogens, acids, and highly toxic

gases.

(Hawes, Workplace Hazards for High-tech Workers,1996) Toxicology
studies

have shown that the chemicals in common industrial use have damaging

affects on the brain and immune, endocrine and central nervous systems.
These

studies report findings for less than two percent of the 80,000
industrial

chemicals that have been comprehensively tested for potential
long-term

effects on human beings. (Hironaka/Cuadros, Environmental Justice
Starts in

the Workplace, 1996) For all practical purposes, workers themselves on
the

line are the laboratory animals being experimented upon to determine
the

synergistic results of combining these unknown chemicals. The
by-product

has been industrial occupational illness rates three times that of
general

manufacturing. (Eisenscher, Silicon Fist in a Velvet Glove, 1993)

Although exploitation of the immigrant experience is nothing new to

California or the Silicon Valley, its cancerous growth as a defining

feature of the industry's economic "success" has never been more
obvious to its

growing low-wage contingent workforce. Once known as the Valley of
Hearts

Delight for being the most productive orchard crop region in the
United

States, Silicon Valley high-tech manufacturing is rooted in a practice
of

using immigrant working communities as fodder to feed its
uncompromising

demand for cheap disposable labor. Beginning with the Mexican
Americans

who once picked fruit in the fields of the Valley, the electronics
industry has

managed to meet its ever increasing number of production orders by
filling

its chemically intensive semiconductor fabrication rooms and assembly
lines

with array of hard working communities of color. Call it the
industry's

interpretation of affirmative action. Not surprisingly, the view of
the

unintentionally diverse blue-collar workforce is lost from the safe

distance of management's window. From that seat of perspective it is
just a blur of

slightly varying shades of brown skin. Brown hands working with an
unusual

anxiety and endurance for 8 to 12 hours a day. It is as permanent a

fixture to the factory image as the white walls and graying ceilings. A
closer

inspection unveils a worker demographic composite naturally mirroring
the

immigration history of the area. Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean, and

Ethiopian women and men of all ages have joined the Latino working

community to create a globally represented workforce in the very
centralized

geographic region of Silicon Valley. For high-tech tycoons of the new

economy, it is a set-up which offers all the advantages of low-cost
third

world labor in the convenience and luxury of the United States. As a

result of current immigration flows, high-tech sweatshops have been
supplemented

in the recent years with the presence of a new addition: the South
Asian

worker.

The twist of fate for the thousands of South Asians on the line, is
that

the treatment which Jivan said workers would never stand for in India
is being

forced upon them in the U.S. because of their immigrant standing. Being
an

immigrant employed in high-tech manufacturing now means that you are

classified as a "low-wage temporary worker". In Silicon Valley this

identity means that you make $6.00 to $8.00 an hour in one of the most

unaffordable places to live in the country, have no job security, and
no

health insurance in an extremely hazardous work environment. Many
temporary

workers start a job thinking of the workplace abuses as the burdens of
a

transitional reality, something to put up with for now, but will soon
end

once a better job is found. Due to the lack of the paradoxical "good

assembly job", many temporary workers become stuck at the same plant,
at

the same position and pay for years-a punishing extended sentence which
slowly

eats away at morale and hope. Thus temporary work becomes permanent in
all

the worst ways and none of the good ways.

The rocket like ascendance of a portion of South Asian engineers and

business people into Silicon Valley royalty has been both a captivating
and

surprising tale of immigrant entrepreneurial stewardship. Captivating
for

the phenomenal amount of wealth, 16.8 billion in sales when combined
with

the Chinese, and surprising because most of these South Asians have
come

over in just the past two decades (Mendoza/Associated Press,Immigrants
Find

Success in Silicon, July 2,1999). The fact that there are over 20
publicly

traded companies each with sales in the millions founded or ran by
Indians

in Silicon Valley seems to have given tangible evidence to the "model

minority" paradigm. Of course such myths are allowed to perpetuate if
the

reality of the rest of the South Asian American existence is given a
blind

eye, thus also avoiding the exposure of an embarrassingly two-faced

relationship of opportunity and exploitation with high tech industry.

While our community and the mainstream media has recognized the
increasing

number of South Asian engineers at the top of the computer field of
Silicon

Valley, the very acknowledgement of thousands of South Asian workers at
the

bottom of the high-tech food chain has been suspiciously absent.
Surely

denying the existence of an entire sector of a community is an
unhealthy

practice unto itself, but if maintained at this rate has the potential
of

dangers well beyond the seemingly neutral intentions of indifference.
In

short, given the "third world" reality which South Asian immigrants
face on

a daily basis in Silicon Valley shop floors, the position of our
community

must mature into an active ally of the broader immigrant labor movement
if

any concept of change is to be expected.

The issue of community intervention becomes even more pressing given
the

anti-union history of the Valley. While most industries of such size
have

union representation to rely upon as a voice for workers rights,
Silicon

Valley has put tremendous energy and resources into keeping the
industry

"union-free". Having the foresight to see how a union could disrupt
the

patently unfair labor practices of his industry, Bob Noyce (the
co-founder

of Intel) claimed in his 1984 book entitled Silicon Valley Fever that,

"Remaining non-union is essential for survival for most of our
companies.

If we had work rules that unionized companies have, we'd all go out of

business. This is a very high priority for management." The industry

obeyed this commandment religiously throughout the booming business
expansions of

the past two decades by implementing rapid response union busting
campaigns

to diffuse any energy that hinted of worker organizing. Without union

protection or a community support network, a worker such as Jivan in

Silicon Valley is left in a battle for workplace justice that pits
himself alone

against an entire industrial complex fully stocked with money,
political

clout, and ludicrously effective media campaigns. The romantic struggle
of

the under-dog looses its charm when one takes notice that these unfair
odds

is the harsh reality directly resulting from his and our community's

absence.

The rising number of South Asians in the manufacturing sector of
Silicon

Valley is an alert to animate the collective South Asian American

consciousness. We must focus on our well being in the workplace,
because

we are being focused upon. Particular energy must be concentrated on

dissolving the separations between labor and community organizing.
They

are manifestations of the same struggle. This becomes even more
apparent when

industries, such as those in Silicon Valley, target and sacrifice
specific

ethnic groups to maintain astronomical and unshared fortunes.
Describing

the status of management/labor relations at his company a co-worker of

Jivan

said, "They (management) think we're mushrooms. They keep us in the
dark

and feed us shit." Illuminating and exposing the dark corners of
Silicon

Valley is intended to foster a unified critical awareness among
workers,

labor groups, and the community. It is a vital step of a protracted

struggle to bring justice to the high-tech in Silicon Valley.

[The author is a member of HealthWATCH

-HealthWATCH (Workers Acting Together for Change) is an association of

immigrant workers in Silicon Valley and a project of the Santa Clara
Center

for Occupational Safety and Health ]

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South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch is an informal, independent &
non-profit 

citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web 

http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex