IT manufacturing workers in Scotland and Thailand forge research alliances to challenge the lack of corporate and government accountability with regard to workers' health

PART I: UNITED KINGDOM

During the 1990s, the growth of the semiconductor industry fuelled the worldwide spread of computer technologies at the same time as government scrutiny of employers' health and safety practices became substantially weaker. Alliances with local rights workers and academic researchers forged by factory workers at National Semiconductor in Scotland have done much to make computer manufacturers more accountable to their employees. At the same time, these alliances have highlighted the challenges of integrating technical data with evidence based on individuals' personal experience.

More than ten thousand people are employed in the semiconductor industry in Scotland , which now accounts for a third of all European personal computer production.

Semiconductor manufacturers portray the industry as free of pollution. Workers, who are mainly women, wear head-to-toe white suits and work in sterile ‘clean rooms' where air is filtered to remove minute particles. Industry representatives claim that these rooms are cleaner than operating theatres. Yet, while protecting the production line from sweat or dust particles from humans, such measures do nothing to protect workers from exposure to hazardous chemicals and solvents, some of which are known to have harmful effects on human reproduction. A former employee of one such firm, National Semiconductor , Helen Clark recalls:

During my interview with the company I was asked if I was affiliated to any trade union and was strongly urged not to contact any previous union. My job training was only for 10 minutes, and it did not include anything about safety procedures or hazards from chemicals. The hazardous gas monitor was never taken seriously, especially when the workload was high, and managers often told us to ignore the danger warning, claiming it to be just a malfunction of the monitor, and to continue to work. I worked for six years, from 1979 to 1985, and one day I just collapsed on the floor. The company doctor told me that I should consider retiring, but I was only 36. Further diagnostic tests showed that I had developed stomach cancer and the doctor told me that my stomach had the look of an 80-year-old woman's. Many workers died of different cancers. I tried to fight back and demand compensation from the company. I commissioned a report and even hired a lawyer. Managers would openly say that it is very difficult to fight with multinationals.'

Injured and ill workers did not receive any compensation beyond standard sick pay from the company. The company was not willing to acknowledge that these illnesses had any link with the manufacturing process. The sick women, with a local activist, formed an organisation called Phase II (People for Health and Safety in Electronics), which then formed a partnership with Californian occupational physicians and Stirling University 's Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group. The researchers helped Phase II members publish evidence of the effects of the toxic chemicals and build a case for the factories to be visited by inspectors from the government's Health and Safety Executive (HSE). However, during their early inspections, the HSE did not take any samples to check the concentrations of hazardous chemicals, including several carcinogens, in the air or on work surfaces, and received no such data from the companies. Soon, Phase II had gathered enough evidence to launch a lawsuit against the plant, demanding compensation for cancer, birth defects in their children, miscarriages and other illnesses.

In response to the legal pressure from ex-workers and growing media coverage, the HSE conducted a new study into spontaneous abortion rates at six semiconductor plants in the UK. In 1998 it announced that, despite evidence from large studies in the USA , there was no sign of increased miscarriage rates. The university and Phase II co-researchers pointed to the statistical unreliability of the HSE's results, and the fact that the government researchers had ignored employees' knowledge of symptoms and their history. In 2001 the HSE conducted another small study on cancer in the company and found excesses of some diseases that have led to further investigations. Phase II and its supporters indicate that only large-scale studies of the industry will glean the epidemiological data needed to establish accurately the health status of past and present workers in the industry. National Semiconductor still employs over five hundred workers at Greenock .

In a joint paper in the International Journal of Occupational Environmental Health, in 2003, Phase II and the Stirling researchers suggested that assessments of occupational safety were all too often "exercises that followed paper trails", allowing inspectors to be deceived. The HSE, they concluded, suffered from "apathy, complacency, under funding", and was inspecting an industry that was "fairly secure in the belief that it will not be regularly and rigorously inspected". In November 2003, the company, which had experienced a 79 per cent rise in profits that year, announced a further investment of around £11 million to "significantly increase production capacity" at its Scottish facility. Organisations like Phase II, working together with unions and international coalitions of workers facing similar risks, are continuing to challenge the lack of corporate and government accountability in the industry.

PART II: THAILAND

Thailand's IT manufacturing sector accounted for a fifth of Thailand 's total exports in 2001. It is characterised by an overwhelmingly female workforce with minimal union representation and weak government oversight. Regulatory capacity is fragmented and overshadowed by the Board of Investment (BOI), which has a mandate to attract foreign investment. The BOI has previously used high-level government contacts to seriously disable the Ministry of Health's only occupational health clinic after it investigated questionable production activities. In 1988 and 1989, a Californian computer manufacturer called Seagate opened two plants in Thailand . By 1991, worker health problems began to surface and there were four deaths. According to their co-workers, the four who died had all experienced headaches, fatigue, muscle aches and fainting. As a result, Seagate found itself facing strong calls for unionisation. In reaction, Seagate laid off 708 employees who were demonstrating in front of the US Embassy for union action. Seagate's director strongly resisted calls for unionisation, and in firing 708 people ensured that union leaders could not secure the 20 per cent of employees required to officially represent the workforce. When it became clear that the company would not recognise a union, most of the fired workers asked to return to their former posts, but were denied the opportunity to do so.

In response to the abuses of worker rights and the poor health conditions at Seagate, Dr Orapan Metadilogkul, the country's foremost practitioner of occupational health, was asked by a coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs) to investigate the deaths. Dr Metadilogkul concluded that more than two hundred members of the workforce had blood lead levels which suggested chronic poisoning, possibly aggravated by solvent exposure. Seagate disputed the evidence on the grounds that job applicants already had high levels of lead in their blood due to exposure to the high levels of leaded petroleum in local urban areas.

Thai laws exacerbate the lack of access to reliable health and safety data. Employees have no right to know about occupational hazards, nor do they have the right to refuse to undertake certain tasks. The law requires that employees are medically examined, but they have no right to choose the doctor or define the level of examination, or to see the results. Each labour inspector monitors, on average, over a thousand sites. Meanwhile, third party organisations are helpless to assist in monitoring conditions due to the same lack of information that workers face.

While IT firms in Thailand claim continuous improvements in working standards and employee health records, they do not disclose their information, making any attempt to evaluate the claimed improvements impossible. Moreover, there is a basic lack of baseline information, such as historical blood lead levels. However, the incidence of workplace accidents at Seagate has encouraged Thai CSOs to organise and demand improvements, campaigning for legislation to set up a national institute for occupational health, safety and environment that is financed independently from the state.

Both Scottish and Thai experiences demonstrate that it is important to have democratic input not only into the sorts of technologies that are developed, but also to the conditions under which they are used.

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