Stories of Electronic Workers Suffering Toxic Exposures
The book contains stories about electronic workers suffering toxic exposures and fighting over it. From the Southwestern US and the Maquiladora region on the Mexico–United States border, to Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, China, and India.
The book argues that "far too (words) have been addressed to the downside of the (electronics industry's) revolution". Its co-editors, in a signed article titled "The Quest for Sustainability and Justice in a High-Tech World", say: "Although most consumers are eager to enjoy their latest electronic games, few relate the declining prices of these and other electronic technologies to the labor of Third World women, who are paid pennies a day."
Other issues focused on by the co-editors include environmental degradation, occupational health hazards, and the "widespread ignorance" of the "health and ecological footprints of the global electronics industry".
There are problems of contamination by hi-tech manufacturing (of workers, air, land and water) from all around -- Silicon Valley in the United States, Silicon Glen in Scotland, Silicon Island in Thailand, and Silicon Paddy in China. It contrasts the reality between the "CEOs and upper management" drawing "multimillion dollar salaries and 'golden parachutes'" as against the reality of the production workers living in packed dormitories and often facing sweatshop conditions.
Read more about this topic: Challenging The Chip
Famous quotes containing the words stories of, stories, electronic, workers, suffering and/or toxic:
“Stories of law violations are weighed on a different set of scales in the Black mind than in the white. Petty crimes embarrass the community and many people wistfully wonder why Negroes don’t rob more banks, embezzle more funds and employ graft in the unions.... This ... appeals particularly to one who is unable to compete legally with his fellow citizens.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“The industrial world would be a more peaceful place if workers were called in as collaborators in the process of establishing standards and defining shop practices, matters which surely affect their interests and well-being fully as much as they affect those of employers and consumers.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“You may take great comfort from the fact that suffering inwardly for the sake of truth proves abundantly that one loves it and marks one out as being of the elect.”
—Ernest Renan (1823–1892)
“America today is capable of terrific intolerance about smoking, or toxic waste that threatens trout. But only a deeply confused society is more concerned about protecting lungs than minds, trout than black women.”
—Garry Wills (b. 1934)