The San Jose ran a 3 part story on the Valley's piece rate workers and those working in contract positions. Some of these are long articles so I only included the URL and a bit of the article.
Part I ran on Sunday, June 27 Outside the eyes of the law, Silicon Valley companies pay Asian
immigrants by the piece to assemble parts (6/27/1999)
http://www.sjmercury.com/premium/front/docs/piecemain27.htm
Outside the eyes of the law, Silicon Valley companies pay Asian immigrants by the piece to assemble parts
at home
BY MIRANDA EWELL AND K. OANH HA Mercury News Staff Writers
N SHARP contrast to Silicon Valley's gleaming labs and sleek cubicles lies a hidden, low-tech underbelly: a loose network of Asian immigrants who are paid by the piece to assemble electronic parts in their homes for some of high tech's major companies, in apparent violation of labor, tax and safety laws.
Whole families, particularly in the Vietnamese emigre community, can be found working far into the night. At kitchen tables and garage workbenches, they solder tiny wires, strip cables and load hundreds of different colored transistors onto printed circuit boards, painstakingly assembling the nervous systems of high-tech products, for as little as a penny per component.
Part II ran on Monday, June 28 Published Monday, June 28, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News
Why piecework won't go away
The practice helped fuel growth at Solectron, and others imitated it
BY MIRANDA EWELL AND K. OANH HA Mercury News Staff Writers
Industrial home assembly sounds like something from a bygone era or a distant land. But it remains entrenched in the way many high-tech products get made here because it provides what Silicon Valley values most: Speed.
That's why paying workers by the piece to assemble electronics components at home has been hard to abolish, even as contract manufacturing has grown from a collection of scrappy mom-and-pop shops into one of the valley's fastest-growing profitable sectors, and even though the practice apparently violates labor and safety laws.
Part III ran as an editorial in Tuesday, June 29 paper.
High tech, low wages (6/29/1999)
http://www.sjmercury.com/premium/opinion/edit/CONTRACT2.htm
EDITORIAL
The opinion of the Mercury News
High tech, low wages
SILICON Valley contract manufacturers' reliance on at-home workers invites exploitation.
The sites for assembling computer parts -- kitchen tables and living rooms of recent Asian immigrants -- are unsupervised. The pressure for production is high. The rate of piecework pay is low; if not clearly illegal, the pay practices are certainly shameful in a high-tech economy that is generating huge wealth and profits.
The system began in the 1980s, as Silicon Valley's computer makers, looking to cut costs, hired independent contractors to assemble products and prototypes that the companies had not transferred overseas for manufacture. The abuse of wage and hour laws persists in at least a segment of the business, a Mercury News investigation found, even though contract manufacturing has become a huge, largely automated and respected industry.
The articles by Mercury News reporters Miranda Ewell and K. Oanh Ha, in the Sunday and Monday editions, found that established contract manufacturers subcontract out special orders or deadline work. This includes Solectron of Milpitas, the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer and 10th largest company in Silicon Valley.