A Run for Their Money
At first it was something to joke about: the "Made in Japan" label signified a piece of shoddy work, a cheap gadget which might fall apart if it were looked at the wrong way. The jokes were soon...
...In the first place, it has...
...Also, eyestrain is an all too common side effect of many assembly line jobs...
...To answer these questions we have chosen to focus on the electronics industry, one of the most internationalized manufacturing systems...
...In the first place, electronics is a young industry...
...Under these conditions, a big investment in automated equipment to do a particular job isn't feasible, and I don't see automation as a possible solution...
...industries (shoe, apparel, electronics) and threatening the jobs of many workers is unmistakable, an understanding of this problem remains hazy at best and totally obfuscated at worst...
...3 0 The drive for higher profits, then, is not to be satisfied within the capitalist marketplace...
...The UE, one of the first industrial unions to join the CIO after its formation, emerged from mass production industries...
...An example of an electronics firm in Western Massachusetts visited by NACLA illustrates our point...
...The profits of the corporation are realized abroad and either sent home or reinvested there or elsewhere...
...The IBEW was an old AFL craft union whose strength came from skilled electricians in the building trades...
...When my supervisor hired people, he asked them if they knew anything about acids...
...First, as in the example above, the materials used in production are harsh and dangerous...
...As we will see below, the sites for offshore production are chosen because of their low wage rates and controlled labor force and the work performed is generally labor-intensive assembly operations...
...The nature of competition in electronics has also determined this low level of automation in the industry...
...electronics industry...
...and 4) components (the transistors, diodes, resistors, etc., which form the basis of the other three areas of production...
...But we can at least lay out the broad outlines of the dispute...
...4 Litton Industries has established plants in Columbia, South Carolina and Goldsboro, North Carolina...
...It represents a large outlay of funds for research and development and for the construction of the first prototype model...
...employment abroad continues to increase...
...The life of some of these products is not very long because competition is keen and somebody else will soon bring out a newer product...
...Finally, we could not escape what had become a reality: the U.S...
...3) government/military goods (radar, sonar...
...It's a matter of economics," according to the head of Stackpole, "Pennsylvania is a high labor area...
...Why then hasn't the electronics industry picked up and moved South, following the lead of apparel...
...With the cheapening of the integrated circuit, however, electronics invaded the watch and clock market...
...So you just have to keep moving ahead...
...Thus, any strategy which separates workers who are thrown together by the very development of capitalist production is destined to be a losing strategy...
...It takes considerably more capital to enter electronics than that required for the apparel industry, for example, but entry is considerably cheaper (and more promising) than in many other industries...
...The UE played an important role in the CIO, helping to organize the first national contracts for GE and Westinghouse workers...
...Please see Appendix Afor a glossary of electronics terms...
...By the time it starts to bother you, it is too late to rinse it off and neutralizing injections become necessary...
...34 Recently a group of U.S...
...The following year, Texas Instruments, the firm which sold Bowmar its components, entered the market, underselling its competitor by S30 on comparable calculators...
...wages are, they are bound to be higher than those in South Korea or Mexico...
...He or she can cut costs by moving the plant to the South or another low-wage, non-union area, but the savings will not be that substantial...
...16 Is this, then the elusive "all-American" industry where paupers can become princes simply by trying harder...
...Needless to say, the firm's savings on wages over these years has been substantial...
...18 There is a certain element of truth in this...
...s It is an industry which, according to the vice-president of one large electronics firm, has "served as the basis of a 'second industrial revolution...
...11 We noted that there are two apsects to the question of realizing profits: 1) production of surplus value (i.e...
...Why are so few workers in a union...
...in the way which will produce the most profit...
...As one worker put it: "The whole problem is that it takes money to make conditions safe for the workers...
...This process reflects an international division of labor in which advanced capitalist countries produce high technology industrial goods and less developed capitalist countries provide raw materials or simple industrial products...
...In radio and TV assembly, for example, materials account for 40% of total costs...
...electronics firms hold decisive technological advantages in many areas of component production, electronics is a major export industry...
...And for some sectors, such as component production, almost two-thirds are production workers...
...Thus, two major centers of electronics production have sprung up: Boston (around Route 128) in the East, close to MIT and the Cambridge engineering centers, and the Santa Clara Valley in California, near Stanford and the Bay area universities...
...Although in the 1960's and 1970's the three unions have found ways of working together, both ideological differences and differences in practice keep them apart...
...A computer can now guide the flight of a satellite on a precise journey of millions of light years, but the computer itself is constructed out of thousands of components which must be assembled by hand, and no computer has yet been developed which can automate that process...
...Digital watches, televisions and computers look as if they were stamped out by giant machines watched over by engineers in white coats...
...Business journals encourage such a view of the industry, describing how "Two PhDs Turn Teledyne into Cash Machine" 17, or how "Hewlett-Packard Takes on the Computer Giants...
...Thus, the runaway is "rational" in the sense that employers escape paying U.S...
...When integrated circuits first came on the market, they averaged S50 each, and the government (through the Department of Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, the CIA, Federal Aviation Administration and NASA) bought 100% of production...
...In fact the level of U.S...
...2) industrial goods (computers, testing equipment...
...labor in general, but four major reasons come to mind...
...Following the war, both industry and consumers began to take more notice of electronics as computers and television started to play an increasingly active role in our lives...
...firms can situate themselves closer to potential or actual retail markets...
...By producing abroad, U.S...
...Even the figures used in this Report were calculated on a calculator assembled in Singapore...
...And automation, as we have seen, doesn't present a very promising picture...
...Who Does the Dirty Work...
...tN "W6 Electronic assembly work at plant in Mexicali, Mexico...
...To do this we must discuss the nature of profits in the industry and how they are generated...
...Three unions organize in the electronics industry: the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (IUE) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW...
...Then you won't be afraid to work with them...
...46 A more important limit than this, however, is the fact that neither Northern workers nor Southern workers can compete with prevailing wage rates being paid in offshore facilities...
...runaways, we can view certain issues which affect our daily lives in a way which otherwise eludes us...
...Employers-who argue that women are innately better at the intricate, monotonous, eye-straining work typical of electronics productionknow that they will be able to hire women at a lower wage rate than men since so many job markets are closed to the former...
...Wages average S4.60 per hour, slightly higher than the S4.25 average for U.S...
...The process continued until the component's price had fallen sufficiently for it to enter the consumer market...
...Consequently, buyers for the component will be few and far between...
...w WHY NOT GO SOUTH...
...Cost cutting, which we have seen to mean wage cutting, is a necessity for both industries...
...24 For many tasks, then, it is not technical difficulties which have limited the spread of automation, but rather costs within the capitalist framework...
...Sales of digital watches, priced as low as S20, exploded from 3.5 million in 1975 to five times that amount one year later...
...Many of the "older" plants are not even a decade old, and many of the firms are still quite small...
...4 These post-war developments filled out the major production areas in electronics: 1) consumer goods (radio, TV, calculators, etc...
...Whole areas of production (especially if they require extensive hand labor) can be phased out altogether or subcontracted to another firm, but both solutions raise a whole series of other problems...
...As the first "solid state" amplifier, it gave off less heat than electron tubes, was less costly, more reliable and much smaller...
...The purpose of such investment is to gain access to that country's raw materials or markets...
...In fact, the major buyer of newly developed components tends to be one alone: the U.S...
...If someone gets hurt, they're 'clumsy' or 'accident prone...
...And one firm alone, IBM, dominates the field with a 65.5% share of the market in 1975.14 The trend toward centralization is equally pronounced in the field of many consumer products...
...And, finally, they're off to market, either in the United States, Europe, or back across the Pacific to Japan...
...Second, we can then evaluate some of the strategies which have been proposed to deal with the effects of runaways...
...market or to other advanced capitalist markets in Europe or Japan...
...When all is ready for production of the new item, however, it doesn't go to a California factory...
...To understand why this is the case, we must first examine the structure of the industry and the nature of its work force...
...But, while this makes organizing more difficult for the workers, it does not present them with an insurmountable problem, particularly if unions begin to organize across national borders...
...It is the fifty-year old women in Massachusetts, the young Latin and Black workers in California, and still other workers in Indonesia, Singapore and Brazil who perform the tedious and intricate steps that turn ideas into reality...
...1 9 Thus, while there is a tendency toward centralization in some sectors of the industry (such as computers or television receivers), all remain vulnerable in this highly competitive industry...
...To increase his or her profits, then, the capitalist has two options: either raising the price of the product (which is fundamentally concerned with the question of realization of surplus value), or lowering the costs of production (which is concerned with the question of production of surplus value...
...Thus, we turn to the one remaining area of costs which does fluctuate, the cost of labor power...
...See the second article] Fourth, electronics does not operate under a seasonal rush, and offshore plants do not have to remain close to distribution or retail centers...
...Internationalization of production has introduced a new type of foreign investment, the "offshore plant," more commonly known as the runaway shop...
...28 And government research and development funds, 25% of total R&D funds in the semiconductor industry in 1958, went largely to the major firms...
...The travels of capital, however, do not stop at the borders of the United States...
...TV producers...
...Very few firms had a hand in the major innovations in the semiconductor industry between the late 1940's and the 1960's...
...Anaconda produces copper on three continents) or vertically integrating their enterprises by producing certain inputs (raw materials) abroad and elaborating the final product in the United States...
...Thomson's "discovery" of the electron in 1897, as an industry it is exceptionally young.* The industry concentrated on radio production until World War II led electronics into the trenches with a massive upsurge of military products...
...ELECTRONICS: AN INDUSTRY ON THE WING Though electronics traces its history back to Thomas Edison's work on the incandescent lamp in the late nineteenth century and to J.J...
...Secondly, the industry produces components which have a very high value in relation to their weight and which can therefore be shipped (or air freighted) easily and cheaply...
...And the Mexican workers currently earn less than S1.00 per hour...
...The company left Philadelphia six years ago to escape the relatively high wage rates in the plant and the union which had won them...
...This can be a boon to capitalists at a certain point...
...For example, such an under- standing clarifies the causes of unemployment, the relationship between imports and unemployment, and the prices we pay for consumer goods...
...6 If this is the case, why haven't the largest firms been able to monopolize the development of new technologies and therefore gain a dominant position in the industry...
...Thus, the electronics boom is strongest in California and Texas while New York and Massachusetts, the older centers of the industry, have entered a semi-permanent recession...
...They can cause skin rashes, bleeding gums and throats, silicosis, damage to the central nervous system, injured brain and liver cells, intestinal problems, and increased suscepti- bility to skin cancer...
...It is a question of the logic of capitalist development which produces competition between capitalists of different nations and capitalists of the same nation, a question of why some capitals expand far away from their original "home base" and why others do not...
...There, Intel's Malaysian workers, almost all young women, assemble the components in a tedious process involving hand soldering of fiber-thin wire leads...
...1s While many branches of the industry are becoming more centralized, all continue to be characterized by fierce competition which usually takes the form of price slashing to undersell competitors...
...The companies just don't care...
...This technology could quickly become obsolete and the company would be stuck with an expensive, and now unprofitable, machine...
...Take wrist watches as an example...
...The large investments necessary for machinery would inevitably tie a company to a specific technology...
...Instead it is air freighted to Intel's plant in Penang, Malaysia...
...Though the pattern of increased imports from abroad is clear, and though its consequences in terms of undercutting some U.S...
...COST CUTTING The determination of costs in the electronics industry varies substantially from branch to branch...
...As Mae-fun, a Hong Kong assembly worker put it: "We girls are cheaper than machines because a machine costs over S2,000 and would only replace two of us...
...9 In all, electronics is, in the words of one observer, an "industry on the wing...
...Furthermore, electronics is a constantly expanding industry...
...in addition a machine tender, whose wages are S120 a month, would have to be hired...
...As an honest, progressive10 union, though, it soon came under attack from government and business forces...
...The Global Assembly Line Since the early 1960's production has taken a new turn, becoming increasingly internationalized in many industries...
...With only a few more complications, capital departs for Taiwan or India, Haiti or Barbados, where it sets up shop, looking for lower wages which translate into higher profits...
...In 1960, Texas Instruments developed the first integrated circuit which, like the transistor before it, did the work of the transistor better, more quickly, more cheaply and was much smaller...
...Late last year Stackpole Carbon, a components producer, pulled up its stakes in Kane, Pennsylvania, and headed for Lincolnton, North Carolina...
...This year it will sell millions of dollars worth of products which did not even exist five years ago...
...The first, we noted, involves relations between capitalists and workers, and the second involves relationships among capitalists in the market...
...4 ' Ampex moved its assembly of consumer tape cassettes to Opelika, Alabama in 1973,42 Magnavox started TV assembly production uin Tennessee in 1973,43 and GTE Sylvania recently moved its color TV assembly operations from Batavia, New York to Smithfield, North Carolina...
...Competition The ability of a firm to raise its prices depends, to a great extent, on the nature of competition in the industry...
...A newly developed component, for example, is often extremely expensive when first developed...
...industrial workers as a whole...
...our tax dollars) went a long way to insure that technological developments would be concentrated among the largest firms...
...27 Government research and development contracts and purchase orders (i.e...
...In fact, there has been a considerable concentration of technological developments...
...Credit: Gil Trevino-Ortiz product, they can often escape high tariffs...
...Until this point we have noted considerable similarities between the apparel industry and the electronics industry...
...2 We noted that, when faced with a highly unionized labor force in the Northeast, the traditional headquarters of the industry, apparel manufacturers increasingly moved production to the non-unionized, low-wage South...
...Here also, competition dictates maximum flexibility and a minimum investment in costly machinery...
...The traditional form it has taken is that of direct investment by one firm in a second country...
...COMPETITION IS THE LIFE BLOOD OF TRADE, FELLOWS, LET'S SEE SOME COMPETITION, LET'S SEE SOME BLOOD...
...This history, although important and fascinating, is nevertheless outside the scope of this Report...
...How ironic that this space age industry is still so firmly rooted in laborious hand work...
...In addition, as we mentioned earlier, firms often produce goods without an assured market, hoping they can create markets with the product in hand...
...23 The burgeoning field has given smaller firms the possibility of competing with larger ones since the nature of the markets is not as defined as in industries such as auto or steel...
...Corporations expand abroad, either producing the same product in many countries (e.g...
...But here, too, a division of labor relegates those tasks to Blacks, Latins and other Third World workers, and women.5 upon workers both here and abroad...
...Geographic separation of the two aspects of production is quite simple...
...In addition, the globally integrated manufacturing system reflects the increasing socialization of the forces of production...
...29 All this, plus the prospect of a long legal suit with an uncertain outcome, has led to a rapid diffusion of technology within the United States...
...In the same plant 90% of the technicians (testers) are men...
...At the present time there are only 7 U.S...
...Unionization It is difficult to measure the rate of unionization in electronics since separate statistics are not available for this industry alone, but by any measure it is very low...
...See the following article] How much are these workers paid...
...The globally integrated manufacturing system reflects a further development of capitalist production in general...
...Women workers are extensively used as a way to keep the overall wage rate low...
...Once assembled, the components are flown back to California, this time for final testing and/or integration into a larger end product...
...Aren't they all major television producers and therefore just as affected by foreign imports...
...3 1 In the industry as a whole, most observers agree that the cost of production facilities in the manufacture of electronic equipment (the fixed capital costs) can be rather low, although by no means insignificant...
...Federal guidelines do exist in regard to the safe use of the chemicals but are insufficient and difficult to enforce...
...capitalists attempt to sell their products at a price which will allow them to retain as much as possible of the surplus value produced...
...On the one hand, we know that no matter what U.S...
...12 Slightly more than half of these firms have fewer than 100 workers each, and nearly 70% have yearly sales amounting to less than S5 million...
...2 Research and development of new products, however, still takes "a pile of dollars," as Forbes remarked...
...13 On the other hand, only six companies account for more than 92% of sales of all mainframe computers, a S7 billion industry in 1975...
...In other words, firms such as IBM7 can influence the prices of computers considerably (and thus increase their profits), but most other firms, particularly in the semiconductor industry, are not able to wield such control...
...Third, plants from high-wage, unionized areas are running away to nonunion areas, accentuating the trend described in the second point...
...More than 3, 000 Intel workers produce a variety of components for use in computers, calculators and other devices which require memory systems...
...Engineers do design these products, but who takes the designs and turns them into consumer goods...
...There has been a steady flow of electronics firms out of New York (its birth place) for more than three decades, and many of these firms have moved South...
...The structure which underlies this development is what one observer has called the "globally integrated manufacturing system...
...U.S...
...Foreign employment in electronics has risen rapidly to an estimated 500,000...
...3 5 But more importantly, only U.S...
...In any case, the fixed capital and materials costs are essentially the same for all capitalists in the industry and do not vary greatly either in different regions of the United States or abroad...
...wages forms an additional incentive for corporations to run away to both non-union areas in the United States and abroad...
...There are a number of reasons for this...
...The jokes were soon replaced by a more general curiosity...
...When you pick up that shiny plastic calculator with its squared-off dayglow numbers lighting up, it is hard to imagine it as a product of labor-intensive work...
...In components production, materials only account for 30% of the total...
...While both deal with the flow of electricity through circuits, electronics products also include tubes and semiconductors which can discharge, direct, control or otherwise influence the flow of electricity...
...Generalizations about such an industry are hard to make...
...On the other hand, while technology has often been used to create a better product, it is used much less frequently to improve the way in which the product is produced...
...Nevertheless, some overall statements can be made which will help us understand why electronics production has become so internationalized...
...Essentially, it opened electronics to a new era of miniaturization...
...Nevertheless, rather than examine these contradictions, our purpose here is three-fold...
...For example, if workers at National Semiconductor's Utah facility go on strike, National can still count on production from their Thailand plant...
...This question leads us to see that the matter is much more complex than at first assumed...
...consumer dresses in shoes from Brazil, slacks from Taiwan, underwear from Haiti, shirts from Hong Kong, hats from South Korea...
...10 The above factors describe why the electronics industry can become internationalized...
...Although we do not address all these questions here, we wish to focus on one issue in particular which underlies and crosscuts the debate on imports and protectionism, the issue of capital's ability to move from place to place and from country to country...
...Most importantly, however, unorganized workers remain unorganized...
...It should be noted that this figure must be seen as an over-estimate since it includes all workers from the third union as electronics workers, surely not the case...
...government...
...In all, more than 330 electronics manufacturing plants were operating in the Southeastern states in 1976.4 5 Still, a number of factors have limited electronics from moving South in greater numbers...
...First, by under- standing the nature of U.S...
...For example, the first transistor was developed at the Bell Telephone Laboratory in 1947...
...While it takes more capital to enter electronics, in neither industry can profits be built on the ability of one or a few firms to influence prices...
...Generally, workers in the United States labor at more capital-intensive, more highly-skilled aspects of production while workers in Third World countries provide the labor-intensive, unskilled inputs.* The product is one, whether it be a computer or a dress, but it directly reflects the labor of workers in several countries...
...More than 6,000 firms compete in electronics, nearly half of which produce component parts for the other branches of the industry...
...3 But anyway you slice it, manufacturers are concerned with cutting labor costs...
...The capitalist seeks to make use of the commodity labor power in the most rational way possible (i.e...
...Many firms prefer to maintain the more technical aspects of production and design close to engineers and scientists...
...As capitalist production expands, it gathers together more and more workers under one roof...
...In this context, we will discuss 1) the structure of competition in the industry and the special role of technology and 2) the various costs of production in electronics...
...Employment has risen a substantial 30% in the past decade, numbering 11,150,000 in 1975.a However, this increase should be seen in light of the even greater growth of the industry during the same period...
...It is common to get HF under your nails, and then have to take shots under your nails...
...Three firms in particular dominated the field: Bell Labs (the testing and laboratory arm of AT&T), Texas Instruments and Fairchild Camera and Instruments...
...We still must examine why the industry was driven to that type of expansion...
...It is one of the most dangerous acids because it does not burn immediately...
...it is the "solid" in "solid-state" products...
...But a question immediately comes to mind: Why didn't GE, RCA, Magnavox, Motorola, Admiral or Warwick sign the petition...
...The question is not easy to answer, requiring a more thorough understanding of U.S...
...apparel industry...
...A few years ago, electronics had nothing to do with this industry...
...Instead, we must now examine the second area from which profits can emerge: cost cutting...
...In 1974, electronics and components and accessories workers produced 2.6% more than in 1969, while working 2.2% less hours...
...it began in the nineteenth century...
...It's not a question of the United States rallying against imports per se by building up its protectionist walls...
...7 In all, the electronics industry produced almost 43,000 different types of products in 1976, from multimillion dollar computers to diodes which sell at less than a quarter...
...and foreign workers in fundamentally the same way, and that they are faced with the same problem: how to take on capital when it is infinitely more mobile than labor...
...Here we wish to discuss in much greater depth this international connection...
...By February, 1975, Bowmar was in court filing for bankruptcy...
...In 1971, Bowmar maintained a virtual monopoly in the production of hand-held calculators...
...When Intel's engineers develop a design for a new electronic circuit or process, technicians in the Santa Clara Valley, California, plant will build, test and redesign the product...
...By technological develop- ment we mean a firm's ability to design a better, more sophisticated product which does more than earlier models, or does the same thing more efficiently or more quickly...
...It refers to the establishment of U.S.-owned plants in Third World countries to manufacture goods for export back to the U.S...
...For one, productivity has gone up...
...3 A single firm now integrates workers around the globe into one coordinated production system which reflects an international division of labor...
...This does not imply that the firms wait around for a competitor to develop a new product which they can then copy...
...employment has not kept pace with the industry's growth for two reasons...
...Part of the plant's production (assembly work on consumer items) was moved to Mexico, the rest (assembly and testing of more sophisticated products) went to Massachusetts...
...Compared to the skyrocketing growth of the electronics industry as a whole-sales have more than doubled-the rise in domestic employment is not so impressive...
...And, finally, since U.S...
...According to a top executive at Motorola Semiconductor, "The frightening thing in this business is that if you're not first-or a fast second or third-you're in trouble...
...Why did our warm sheepskin gloves carry the tropical weather label "Made in the Philippines...
...Thirdly, since components are an intermediary *The Silicon Valley, actually the Santa Clara Valley, is called this because of the abundance of semiconductor manufacturers there...
...In the Western Massachusetts plant mentioned above, for example, 80% of the employees are women who virtually all work on the assembly line...
...Competition means that a firm must constantly be innovating...
...Offshore production is quite different from other types of foreign investment...
...employment has stagnated...
...And, as the CIO itself grew increasingly more conservative, many of its unions also joined the attack on the UE...
...The movement of capital abroad, the "internationalization of capital," is not a new process...
...Electronics is hard to define as an industry since it is, more precisely, a science...
...In the branches of electronic components and radio and television, over half of the workers are women, whereas only 29% of the higher skilled and better paid computer workers are women...
...As firms gained experience in producing the component and began to mass produce it, the price started to fall and the industrial market opened up...
...In this section we will examine both propositions and will conclude that, due to the nature of technology and competition in the electronics industry, the industry has come to rely on cost cutting-essentially cutting labor costs-as its principal method of raising profits...
...Take the case of the Bowmar Corporation...
...They expelled the UE from the CIO (it had withdrawn by then, anyway) and chartered a new union, the IUE, to take over the UE's workers...
...The petition was signed by GTE Sylvania, Owens-Illinois, Corning Glass, Sprague Electric, Wells-Gardner and Zenith...
...It's not solely or simply a question of "U.S...
...Electronics emerges as an industry which is highly centralized in some of its branches, overrun by thousands of competing firms in others, and intensely competitive throughout...
...Scientists and engineers from Bell Labs had a hand, ultimately, in creating no less than 15 other semiconductor firms between 1952 and 1967...
...So why no monopolization of technology and, by extension, production...
...Finally, we hope to examine the effects of this new development *This does not mean, of course, that no labor-intensive work is performed in the United States...
...In 1950, more than 140 firms assembled and sold TV receivers in the United States...
...The UE, once the third largest industrial union in the United States, was left greatly weakened, but alive...
...Secondly, since it is a young industry, new shops are being established in low-wage, non-union areas...
...If they said no, he answered, "Good...
...As a leading industry representative remarked, in electronics ". . . you don't project future markets-you go out and invent them...
...General Electric, Westinghouse, RCA and IBM played a lesser, but still important, role...
...Altogether, electronics represents an industry with projected sales for 1977 approaching the S60 billion mark, a figure only slightly smaller than the total GNP of Canada...
...8 Electronics, particularly the semiconductor industry, is an international industry par excellence...
...The industry has even developed a name for the common practice of copying another firm's products: "second sourcing," which, according to Fortune, "more often than not [is] done without the original manufacturer's permission or cooperation...
...Other types of investment which reflect the internationalization of capital are "portfolio" investments (one firm purchasing the stocks of a foreign company but not administering the company), licensing agreements (the sale or rental of technology abroad), or bank loans...
...Silicon is the most common substrate used in semiconductor devices...
...television producers presented the International Trade Commission (1TC) with a petition requesting that the President raise import quotas on color TV's entering the United States...
...Find some young scientists and engineers who have a good idea on how to produce a better product, raise a quarter of a million dollars and you're in business, taking on the giants and the not-so-big alike...
...It was felt that we had to get out of the resistor business or relocate...
...Intel Corporation is located in the heart of California's "Silicon Valley, "* the rapidly developing center of the U.S...
...THE ONLY WAY THINGS WILL CHANGE IS IF WE MAKE CHANGES" "I once worked in a department where hydrofluor- ic acid (HF) was used extensively...
...When all the possible alternatives have been discussed and discarded, only one remains highly attractive for the capitalist: move production abroad...
...21 The same integrated circuit which the government purchased for S50 in 1960 cost less than S2.35 six years later and has allowed a whole range of products to enter the consumer market...
...The production process contains health hazards for electronics workers...
...This is particularly the case with electronic components...
...In 1975, 41% of all electronics workers were women, a total of 4,628,000.37 The overwhelming9 majority are in low-skilled, low-pay jobs...
...In summary, a capitalist driven by the need to expand profits is faced with a variety of alternatives...
...22 Similar developments have brought electronics into the home appliance field (microwave ovens), other areas of communications (CB radios), automobiles (engine control) and accounting (calculators...
...NACLA examined the question of capital's mobility in deoth when we looked at the U.S...
...20 As can be imagined from the above, technology plays an enormous role in the electronics industry since it helps determine both the size and nature of the market...
...Bulky, heat-producing tube radios were quickly replaced by pocket-sized "transistor" radios...
...One of the main factors which has thus far restricted monopolization, and maintained intense competition even in the face of it, is the role played by technology and technological development...
...The only way things will change is if we make changes...
...However, wages vary greatly between computer workers, a category of more skilled, predominantly male workers (wage average S5.13 an hour), and component workers, who are less skilled and mainly women (wage average S3.89 an hour...
...The IBEW also ceased to respect UE contracts and joined the IUE in the raiding...
...By doing this we will demonstrate that the globally integrated manufacturing system has affected U.S...
...David Packard, chairman of Hewlett-Packard, summed up the perspective of the companies when he remarked that: My own company will bring out over 100 new products this year...
...wage rates (the highest in the capitalist world) for unskilled, labor-intensive work which can be undertaken practically anywhere...
...As long as technology changes so rapidly, and as long as labor power is cheaper than machines, capitalists have no incentive to automate...
...Where Profits Come From In "The Apparel Industry Moves South," (March 1977), NACLA discussed the centrality of profit to any discussion of why an industry expands or moves in a certain way...
...With the growing internationalization of production, workers from more than one country are, at least figuratively, gathered under one roof...
...It organized workers who had previously been unor- ganized, or who were organized into small independent unions, the AFL "federal" unions, or different affiliated locals...
...Because competent semiconductor firms can duplicate a new device within six to twelve months after it first appears, and since scientists are free to move from firm to firm (which they do frequently, lured by higher salaries or the dream of getting in at the ground floor of an up-andcoming corporation), technology diffuses rapidly in the industry...
...Operatives in the Massachusetts plant now earn what the Philadelphia workers earned six years ago: S3.50 an hour...
...Most critically, electronics manufacturing is easily divisible into high-technology work (development, design, engineering, testing) and labor-intensive work (assembly...
...After an unsuccessful attempt to break the UE from within, the CIO unions tried another tactic...
...This is a highly complex question in the case of the electronics industry...
...The integrated circuit has allowed for micro-miniaturization in electronics...
...Finally, there is an historical rivalry between the unions that has sometimes meant that energy is put into raiding rather than organizing the unorganized...
...capital" competing against "Japanese capital...
...A computer as "smart" as the first UNIVAC computer which covered thousands of square feet of space can now fit in a tiny chip of silicon no larger than a fingernail...
...Electronics is so labor intensive that, measured by assets per employee, it ranks next to the most labor-intensive industriestextiles and apparel.32 Over half of all electronics workers are production workers...
...By adding together figures supplied by two of the three major unions organizing in electronics and comparing this to the total number of production workers in the industry, we were able to estimate that approximately 15% of electronics workers are unionized...
...Most observers cite one reason: it's hard to keep a secret in the industry...
...It is a natural offshoot of the earlier electrical industry...
...Labor costs also vary in the industry, from 20% of the total in the case of radio and TV assembly to 45% of the total in components production...
...Thus, when RCA decided to expand production of its Taiwan subsidiary, it closed down both its Indiana facilities and its plant in Memphis, Tennessee.47 What's a Capitalist to Do...
...wage workers produce a value above that represented by the money they receive as wages), and 2) the realization of surplus value (i.e...
...This is particularly clear in electronics which has the unique distinction of being the only industry in which prices have consistently gone down in the last fifteen years...
...The Army Signal Corps, for example, financed pilot production lines for transistors and related devices at five sites operated by8 Western Electric (the manufacturing arm of AT&T), GE, Raytheon, RCA and Sylvania...
...As of 1976, one-sixth of all electronics firms in the United States were in California and almost onequarter in Massachusetts, New York or Connecticut...
...Given the fact that many unions concentrate their organizing in more established industries and only among the largest employers-most electrical workers at GE and Westinghouse, for example, are unionized- electronics remains a union backwater...
Vol. 11 • April 1977 • No. 4
