Unions See a Fertile Field at Lower End of High Tech (fwd)

Stephen E Philion philion at hawaii.edu
Sun Sep 26 14:19:59 PDT 1999


Re: Doug's idea that private service sector work should also come with good benefits and the like...here's a NY Times report that would seem to agree...Steve

NY TIMES September 26, 1999

GRASS-ROOTS BUSINESS

Unions See a Fertile Field at Lower End of High Tech

By JOEL KOTKIN

S AN JOSE , Calif.In a valley that celebrates its bumper crop of

winners, you might count people like Julian Cornejo as among the

losers. Cornejo, 55, a technician in computer-aided design, has

spent the last 15 years working as a kind of high-tech gypsy for

various temporary agencies, a situation that now leaves him nearly

broke and on the brink of homelessness.

[26root.1.jpg]

Mark Richards for The New York Times

Julian Cornejo, an unemployed technician in computer-aided design,

supports plans to organize Silicon Valley's contingent workers.

_________________________________________________________________

"Temporary workers have become a hidden subculture here," Cornejo

said. "You don't enjoy the stock options or the holidays. When

you're laid off, you just bite the bullet. You don't get much

respect."

Cornejo's experience as a temp, which included a financially

ruinous dispute with an employment agency over a workers'

compensation claim, has led him to support a new effort to organize

contingent workers throughout Silicon Valley. And the travails of

workers like him offer what union organizers see as a unique

opportunity to improve on the negligible headway they have made

among technology workers at established companies.

The drive to organize the valley's huge army of temporary workers

also reflects growing concern about the widening gaps between

differing classes of workers in the high-tech economy of the late

1990's. Research from both ends of the labor-management spectrum

shows that while top executives' compensation has been soaring

throughout the decade, the real wages of lower-end workers have

been stagnant or dropping, even in the pulsing heart of the

technology boom.

"There's a myth that everyone is rich and that poverty is just a

transitional problem," said Bob Brownstein, policy director for

Working Partnerships, a labor-backed group that has studied the

valley economy. "That is something that is simply not true."

Brownstein and several academic experts trace much of widening

class chasm to a shift by high-technology companies to hiring

temporary workers. Since the mid-1980's, employment in temporary

agencies in the valley has risen at twice the overall job growth

rate and now accounts for 27 to 40 percent of the total work force,

according to Chris Benner, a researcher for Working Partnerships.

Wages for part-time workers -- mainly clerks, electronics assembly

workers and technicians -- have generally lagged behind those of

full-time employees.

Greater reliance on temps is a trend in many sectors of the

economy, but according to Brownstein, it represents an especially

stark shift in culture in the technology industry, where the role

models used to be giants like Intel and Hewlett-Packard that prided

themselves on generous, almost paternalistic employment policies. A

new wave of companies, he said, reject such practices and instead

use temporary or contract labor to maintain flexibility while

restricting their permanent staff to a small number of core

employees.

Many of the valley's temps, like Cornejo, have trade-school-taught

computer and technology skills that once might have spared them

from the kinds of indignities more usually associated with garment

sweatshops or farm fields. No longer, said Erica Rios, a union

organizer. Unlike the young programmers and engineers who work

crushing hours but can hope to join in windfall profits through

stock options and other incentives, "these workers do not feel they

are part of the high-tech industry," she observed. "They play an

important role but feel totally unappreciated."

Their disaffection is the starting point for organizing efforts

like Working Partnership's Temporary Workers Project. The project

includes setting up a temporary-workers' association, drafting a

new model code of conduct for employers and establishing a new

temporary agency called Together at Work. Ms. Rios said the effort

sprang from workers' complaints that the workers' compensation and

health benefits offered by for-profit temporary agencies are

inadequate and that the agencies make it difficult for workers to

avail themselves of their benefits.

Cornejo said he filed a workers' compensation claim in February

1998 after experiencing a shoulder injury on the job at a local

semiconductor company, but received nothing until October, because

of what he called foot-dragging by the agency that had placed him;

the injury left him far behind on his bills. "The agencies don't

want to press a claim that may cost a company something," he said.

"They don't want to bite the hand that feeds them."

The unions may see an opportunity, but industry officials doubt

that labor will have any more luck organizing contingent workers

than they have had with full-timers. Carl Guardino, president of

the Silicon Valley Manufacturers Association, said unions simply do

not fit well into what he sees as the region's highly collaborative

culture.

"I think the reason that Silicon Valley has functioned so well for

so long -- and so many boats have risen -- is that there is not so

much of this 'us versus them' that is associated with many of the

unions," Guardino said. "I can appreciate that they are looking at

this sector. But will they be effective in Silicon Valley? I don't

think so."

_________________________________________________________________

Are temporary workers a booming area's proletariat?

_________________________________________________________________

So far, the evidence backs him up. The organizing effort has not

succeeded in changing policies at major temporary agencies, and

after nine months in existence, Together at Work has placed only 100

people. Yet both Ms. Rios and Christine Macias, who runs the

temporary agency, see their efforts as just the beginning of a

breakthrough for unions in an industry unfriendly to their efforts.

For one thing, the issue of contract workers and their treatment in

the workplace has attracted media attention, including articles in

The San Jose Mercury News, and a California State Senate committee

plans hearings on the subject. Brownstein says that the valley's

image as the home of a new democratic capitalism is beginning to

wear thin, and that both workers and employers are coming around to

the idea that new standards for temporary labor are needed.

"There are more and more people, even in industry, who fear that

the gap between the rich and poor is becoming the biggest threat to

the security of the valley," Brownstein said. "You don't have to be

a Cassandra or a radical to know something needs to change. That's

the discussion we're trying to start."

Joel Kotkin is a senior fellow at the Pepperdine Institute for

Public Policy. His column on the Main Street economy appears the

fourth Sunday of each month. E-mail: grassrts at nytimes.com

_________________________________________________________________

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