SLIDE 1 “Challenging the chip: Labor rights and environmental justice
in the global electronics industry”
Presented at
ANROAV Meeting in Hong Kong
August 30, 2007 by Ted Smith, Founder Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition / International Campaign for Responsible Technology http://svtc.org http://www.computertakeback.com/ http://svtc.etoxics.org/site/PageServer?pagename=svtc_int_campaign_responsible_tech
SLIDE 2 Our History: Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health formed in 1970’s
- SCCOSH formed 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.
SLIDE 3 Our Strategy
- Industry specific focus – electronics
- Unite labor and community struggles
- Focus on occupational and environment
health
- Life cycle approach – mining production
use end of life/disposal
- Hold the brand names accountable
- Grass roots bottom up work with
people who are the most impacted
SLIDE 4
Valley of Heart’s Delight
SLIDE 5 Unions Organizing Silicon Valley's High Tech Workers by David Bacon
- 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
- perating our companies. The great hope for our nation
is to avoid those deep, deep divisions between workers and management which can paralyze action."
SLIDE 6
The wake up call !!
Groundwater pollution in Silicon Valley poisons families
SLIDE 7
SLIDE 8
SLIDE 9 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
SLIDE 10 Body Burden
(1000+ Chemicals Used in Electronics Production)
SLIDE 11
AMRC Handbook - 1985
SLIDE 12
Earthday 1989 IBM rally: “Stop using CFC’s”
SLIDE 13
SLIDE 14 Toxic Components in Computers
- Solvents used to make chips, disk drives,
etc
- Lead and cadmium in circuit boards
- Lead and barium in monitors
- Brominated flame retardants on printed
circuit boards, cables and plastic casing
1 of 2
SLIDE 15 Toxic Components in Computers
- Poly-vinyl chloride (PVC) casings
- Mercury switches, flat screens
- Brominated flame retardants in plastics
2 of 2
SLIDE 16
The footprint of high-tech development
SLIDE 17
Intel case study by SWOP
SLIDE 18 Intel Inside New Mexico Sucking the Southwest Dry
- The explosion of high-tech development in the Southwest
means that the region’s already sparse water supplies must meet the needs of one the world’s fastest-growing - and thirstiest - industries.
- In 1993, Intel received the largest corporate welfare
package in the country’s history to construct a facility in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Since then the SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP) has been holding Intel accountable to protect New Mexico’s environment and
- economy. In New Mexico—the 48th poorest state and the
third most arid state in the US—87% of the water used by the top industrial users in the Albuquerque area is by the five high tech companies: Intel, Philips, Sumitomo, Motorola, and Honeywell.
SLIDE 19 Computer TakeBack Campaign
- Take it back
- Make it clean
- Recycle Responsibly
www.computertakeback.com
SLIDE 20
300 Million Obsolete Computers by 2004
Plastic 4 billion lbs. Lead 1 billion lbs. Cadmium 1.9 million lbs. Chromium 1.2 million lbs. Mercury 400,000 lbs.
SLIDE 21
Dell Student Activism Helps turn Dell Around
SLIDE 22
Activists oppose Dell’s use of Prison labor for Computer Recycling
SLIDE 23
Bad Apple Campaign
SLIDE 24
SVTC expands as Industry moves out of S.V. Global High-Tech Production is Undergoing the Largest Industrial Expansion in the History of the World
SLIDE 25 Source: SEMI
New Fab (Chip Factory) Construction
- 127 new fabs in planning & construction
– Total to exceed $115 billion – $1 - 3 billion each – 300 mm fabs may double the cost
- 200 mm to 300 mm fabs: $14 billion
– “Largest industrial transition in history”
SLIDE 26
High Tech manufacturing is global
SLIDE 27
High Tech manufacturing is global (2)
SLIDE 28
Hitachi workers in Mexico: “Defend our labor rights!”
SLIDE 29 Japanese electronics found to pollute groundwater
- Campaign for Responsible Technology
(CRT List Serve Letter #16, Aug 10, 1998) Return to List Serve Archive
- The problem with groundwater pollution and the
electronics industry is not limited to the United States as reported in the July 25 issue of The Economist.
July 25, 1998
SLIDE 30 Intel inside Costa Rica By Leslie Byster
- Prompted by concerns about Intel's plans to build 2 test and
assembly facilities in their country, two activists from Costa Rica recently visited with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the SouthWest Organizing Project (Albuquerque, NM). Julio Rojas, an epidemiologist at the University of Costa Rica and William Alvarez, a former elected official in Belen, were gathering information about the impacts of high-tech development on local communities like Silicon Valley and Silicon Mesa in New Mexico. Their visit to the US was sponsored by the Campaign for Responsible Technology and the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice.
Fall, 1997
SLIDE 31
Chip plants not safe
SEMICONDUCTOR PLANTS AREN'T SAFE AND CLEAN AS BILLED, SOME SAY October 5, 1998 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. "There's a whole lot more who would be here with us," says 61-year-old Doreen Robinson, who has breast cancer. "But they're already dead."
SLIDE 32
RCA Workers in Taiwan
SLIDE 33 ICRT – GAIA signing ceremony
Concerned about the shipment of e-waste to Asia, representatives of organizations attending the Waste Not Asia 2001 conference in Taiwan signed the CTBC Platform
SLIDE 34
Taiwan workers plead cancer case
Link RCA plant to disease Matthew Yi, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, May 24, 2002 While many laud the globalization of technology as a positive force that spreads the wealth and helps industry grow, a group of Taiwanese workers came to Silicon Valley Thursday to tell a different story. Their tale has to do with a former RCA facility in Taiwan's northern county of Taoyuan. More than 1,000 former employees of that facility are suffering from cancer and more than 200 have died, according to the visiting workers, who used to make TVs and semiconductors.
SLIDE 35
SLIDE 36
E-Waste Dumped in Guiyu, China
SLIDE 37
Women sorting wires to burn in China
SLIDE 38
Burning E-Waste in Guiyu, China
SLIDE 39 The Digital Dump
A new report on e-waste dumping in Africa by the Basel Action Network October 24, 2005
SLIDE 40
Global e-waste dumping
SLIDE 41 Bejing Conference
and E-Waste
SLIDE 42
E-Waste and Clean Production Conference in Bejing – April 2004
SLIDE 43
SLIDE 44
International Campaign for Responsible Technology (ICRT)
Global Symposium on Strategies for a Sustainable High-Tech Industry November 14-17, 2002 San Jose, CA http://www.svtc.org/icrt/index.html
SLIDE 45 Activists gather at First Symposium
- n Global Strategies for a
Sustainable High-Tech Industry
SLIDE 46 International Campaign for Responsible Technology (ICRT)
Draft Mission Statement, adopted November 16, 2002
- We are an international solidarity network that
promotes corporate and government 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.
SLIDE 47
From Silicon Glen to Silicon Valley: Jim & Helen
SLIDE 48
ICRT delegation visits National Semiconductor
SLIDE 49
SLIDE 50
ICRT takes on SIA
SLIDE 51
SLIDE 52 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
SLIDE 53
Book tour at Beijing University
SLIDE 54
Book release in Bangalore
SLIDE 55
Book release in Kerala
SLIDE 56
Waste Not Asia meeting in Kerala, India - 2007
SLIDE 57
Meeting at Taiwan EPA: ICRT and TEAN
SLIDE 58
GoodElectronics Network
SLIDE 59
For More Information:
www.svtc.org www.computertakeback.com
