FoundSF

"I was there..."

"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in Processed World magazine between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.

by Tom Wetzel

—from Processed World #12, published in Winter 1984/85.

View north over Silicon Valley from hills south of San Jose.

Photo: Chris Carlsson, 2011

7:12 AM. A red glow in the east is visible through the haze over San Francisco Bay as the Peninsula train scatters waterbirds along the shore. I'm trying to sip coffee as the railcar rocks side-to-side. Gotta wake myself up. Another day as a drone in the computer industry lies ahead. I've got my feet up on the facing chair, reading the paper.

The name of my employer, Tandem Computers, draws my attention to a small item. Another article about poisoned groundwater in Silicon Valley. Tandem's main assembly plant and world headquarters is located on the site of a former Four Phase chip-making plant in Cupertino. When Four Phase abandoned the facility, they left behind many gallons of toxic chemicals in underground tanks. Only it seems they never told anyone about it. Now leaks from the tanks have been discovered. 1 know my co-worker John will not be happy about this. He lives near that site. Doting father that he is, he will be concerned about any possible effect on his two baby boys.

Brakes squeal as the train makes another of its many stops. The car fills with chattering school kids. I look up from the paper. A familiar station facade, with its small, opaque window panes tells me we're at Palo Alto. Not far from this station is the Stanford Research Institute. What arcane military plans, I wonder, are being discussed there this warm valley morning? A missile guidance system destined for submarines roving off the Siberian coast? How to load a C-130 to fly the maximum firepower to Honduras? The pickety-pok of wheels hitting rail joints picks up as the train gets rolling again.

A knot of workers are talking in the parking lot as the train glides past the Westinghouse plant in Sunnyvale. This facility makes guidance and navigation systems for such military projects as the Cruise missile. This reminds me of John's comment the day before: "At least Tandem doesn’t do military work.” The government doesn't buy many of their machines at any rate. Not yet. However, after ADA was adopted as the Defense Department's official language, Tandem decided that its future computers must be based around that language. With all the companies lined up at the Pentagon feeding trough, they don't want to lose out.

Tons of cash for missiles that hopefully will never be used, but little money to modernize this rail line. The newest railcars were built in the 1950s. New cars are slated for the line in the near future, or so it is rumored. But even so, they'll still be pulled by. slow and inefficient diesel engines. With all of the road crossings, they'll win no trophies for speed. Every so often a hapless motorist has an unfortunate experience at the hands of a massive diesel-­electric engine. This area may be on the cutting edge of technological prowess, yet I commute to work on a moving museum.

The train slows for the stop in the Oakmead Industrial Park. I jump off, along with a stream of fellow wage-slaves. The lady across from me on the shuttlebus is wearing a severe dark-blue suit, and a “Memorex” badge.

The bus dumps me on the edge of the road. You can gauge the significance of the auto in this area by the fact that sidewalks are nonexistent and buildings hide behind parking lots. As I traipse across the inevitable parking area, I'm greeted by the lettering on the doors, "Customer Engineering Headquarters Operations." I wave to the receptionist. Another day begins.

Working for Parasites

Tandem's particular niche in the market is the manufacture of large computers that are "fault-tolerant." This means the machine can continue working and minimize loss of data when components fail. For example, the computer monitors its own power supply and can sense when power is beginning to go out.

Backup batteries then go into operation, allowing time for the computer to take all work then in progress on VDTs and save it on disc. This can minimize the loss of data, a feature that is of particular interest to banks. If anyone owes them ten cents or a million bucks, they don't want to lose track of it.

View easterly across Santa Clara Valley, aka Silicon Valley.

Photo: Chris Carlsson, 2009

Tandem's computers were particularly designed for situations where users would interact with them. Such as your local Automatic Teller Machine. Citibank, which was the first bank to go in for ATMs in a big way, is Tandem's biggest customer.

Building computers for the banks may seem less threatening than building a navigation system for a Cruise missile. But it is ultimately just as useless to human welfare. Banks are in the business of making money by lending out other people's money. They don't make any product that directly satisfies human needs or desires. If you get credit from the bank to buy a house (no easy trick these days), it's not the green folding stuff that does anything to make you happy, the house is what you're interested in. And bankers don't go out and build houses in their three-piece suits. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians and so on are responsible for the existence of houses. But because getting anything that we want depends on having money under the existing social arrangement, the banks can exploit this to build up their power and wealth while doing nothing of actual benefit to human beings. As such, the banks are social parasites.

'Participatory Management'

Faced with the crumbling of worker loyalty and a less cooperative workforce, a new management philosophy, "participative management," has come to the fore in recent years. Sometimes this goes under the rubric of "Quality of Worklife." A number of the newer electronics companies like Tandem have developed this management style. This theory is a recognition of the fact, paradoxical as it sounds, that there are times when the bosses' control over their workforce can only be strengthened by giving the appearance of sharing control.

This involves such practices as holding regular staff meetings to discuss goals and problems with workers, allowing workers to raise questions and provide suggestions. The purpose is to encourage a sense of commitment and loyalty to the labor process—and to the company's profit-inspired goals.

According to a Tandem employee magazine, which contains the glib PR and puffery usually associated with such rags, I came across the following description of their "participation" con-game is "like the president and the House of Representatives and the Senate. The manager is there as a check against manufacturing people, just as the manufacturing people keep the manager in check. We've got the architecture of a democratic system ... " "Capitalism and humanism are converging," chirped Jimmy Treybig, the charismatic ex-salesman who founded Tandem. "Tandem's a socialist company."

The star in Tandem's "participatory management" program is their video display terminal (VDT) factory at Austin, Texas. When the workforce was first hired, they were allowed to choose between two methods of building the VDTs: Either they could work on an assembly line, and each worker would do just one fragment of the operation repeatedly (the Taylorist alternative), or else each person could build the whole terminal from start to finish.

The workers chose to build the whole terminal. After assembling the VDT, the worker tests it and then attaches a sticker with his or her name on it. The idea is that each person will feel motivated to take greater care—and the company will not be embarrassed by malfunctioning VDTs in a customer's office.

PWers pause on a corporate patio during a frantic and hilarious 1984 tour of Silicon Valley.

Photo: Laura Fraser

On the other hand, when top management imposed a nine-month hiring and wage freeze at Thanksgiving, 1982, this was imposed as an edict from the top. No "participation" in that decision. The company's 14.2% profit rate was higher than average for U.S. business as a whole, but not high enough to suit the top brass.

Management still makes the decisions. They may listen to workers' suggestions but they are under no obligation to follow them. They are free to sift through worker suggestions and choose the ideas that fit their goals, such as increasing productivity and having fewer product breakdowns. The analogy with the "checks and balances" system of the federal government is entirely phony since workers certainly are not accorded the right to veto management decisions.

The underlying authoritarianism occasionally pokes out from behind the "participatory" smokescreen, as I witnessed during a minor incident early in my tenure at Tandem. The head of my department had been scheduling the staff meetings to occur just before the 4 PM Friday beer­bust (a company institution, with free beer), which meant that no one could leave early. Some members of the department raised the suggestion that meetings be held earlier in the day. John, the fellow with the two baby boys, had been taking advantage of the company's "flex-time" policy to leave early on most days so that he could see his wife before she went off to her job as a nurse at a local hospital. Two other co-workers were single parents who wanted to leave early to be with their children. Jim, the department's lider maximo, cut off discussion by responding curtly: "I won't be dictated to by 17 people."

Tandem's practice of giving stock-options (the right to buy stock at a discounted price) to new hires and in lieu of bonuses also fits in with their "participatory" philosophy. Because many employees owned stock, the vagaries of the stock price was a frequent topic of conversation. In the building where I worked, one wall of the coffee room was taken up by a large piece of grid paper on which the daily changes in the stock price were charted. Besides encouraging a sense of participation in a common venture, there are two other benefits the top brass receive from widespread employee stock ownership:

(1) The company cannot be taken over as easily by outside investors or a conglomerate in search of a juicy new acquisition, thereby more firmly entrenching the current management.

(2) The employees become a major source of capital for the firm, making it less necessary for the company to go to banks for credit.

Although much of Tandem's stock was owned by employees, the power relations in production were not affected. For one thing, the amount of stock that people own is not the same. Factory workers cannot afford to buy much stock whereas huge blocks of stock are owned by the top brass.

Mail Wars

After the top management of Tandem announced their wage and hiring freeze in November, 1982, I arrived at work the next day to find an electronic mail message that had been sent to all employees by a gutsy technician in one of the company's far-flung offices. The message protested that the freeze was shameful and unfair. This electronic mail system permits immediate contact between most employees, even when separated by thousands of miles of geography.

To use the mail system, an employee would need to have access to a video display and a "mail ID"—the electronic equivalent of a postal box. About three­-fourths of the firm's 4,000 employees had direct access to the mail system, including clerical and warehouse workers, technical writers, field technicians and systems analysts.

The mail system worked like an electronic bulletin board. After typing in the word "mail" at a VDT, you could page through the various mail messages you had received.

When sending messages to others, you could either "post" a "first class" message directly to another individual—in which case other people would (presumably) not see it—or else you could "broadcast" a second-class or third-class message to a defined group of mail users.

"Second class" mail was reserved for work-related topics. This usually consisted of queries about technical questions, such as snags in some specific customer application. This was in fact the main use of the mail system.

"Third class" mail was provided as a kind of employee benefit. Since the mail system was needed for people to communicate about technical questions in their work, the company didn't mind if, in addition, you used the mail to sell your 1968 Chevy or those spare tickets to the Talking Heads concert. The technician's protest against the wage freeze, however, indicates how employees could use it in ways not intended by management.

When "broadcasting," you would send the message to everybody in a defined group, such as all employees in Northern California or all employees in the company's global network. There existed self-­defined mail groups, such as all IBM PC owners. If you wanted to send out a message to all co-workers in your department but didn't want management to see it, you could define a mail group appropriately using the exact "mail ID" of each co-worker.

Sometimes people would simply get bored and send out jokes. Other times jokes and comments would lead to controversies, as various people added their responses. These brouhahas were soon dubbed "Mail Wars." Perhaps the biggest of the Mail Wars was touched off by an inoffensive message sent out by a man who belonged to a group called "High Tech Gays."* (* This group has been in the news recently because of their complaint that gays are restricted from military-related work by discrimination in obtaining security clearances. It's unfortunate that access to military work is seen as part of the fight for liberation—on a par with women wanting to become cops.)

The message advertised the formation of a gay employees mail users group and social club. The organizers did not see themselves as "activists." As they saw it, they were just organizing a coffee klatsch.

The replies ranged from erstwhile participants, activists, and "straight" supporters to "faggot" epithets and the predictable religious loonies. Someone in the Santa Clara stockroom sent one of the more threatening replies:

FROM: STCL.MFG.STOCK

14JUL83 12:33

TO: SVLDEV.SVLDEV.EASTMAN

SUBJECT: A mail group for Gay Tandem employees

I hope you can round up all the homo's in Tandem, because if you do we will find out where one of those meetings is being held and pay you gay bates a visit, and beat the shit out of every one of you. I bet you take it up the butt you little tinkerbell.

Here is another message of the same ilk, sent from the Midwest:

FROM: CENTREG.SUPPORT.PRS

29JUL83 15:27

TO: SVLDEV.SVLDEV.EASTMAN

SUBJECT: stay in the closet fag fuck

Steve—you ignorant slimy piece of fag fuck, how dare you show your pathetic sexual perversion to the Tandem network. On top of this, you have the stupidity to be proud of the fact that you stick your little pecker up some other sicko faggot's asshole and have your perverted orgasm (you probably piss instead of cum). The next time I'm in Cupertino I'm going to kick your faggy ass across the parking lot and personally cut your balls off.
—Redneck Matha USA, apple pie, and heterosexuality

Later on I talked with Steve Eastman (the gay group's coordinator) about these and other anti-gay messages he received. He doubted that the people who tapped out blunt insults in the isolation of their office or work space would necessarily respond in that way in a face-to-face encounter. Because people are atomized when communicating over the mail system, people communicate with less of an awareness of the other person as someone who is going to react to what they say.

One of Steve Eastman's non-gay co­workers happened to see the kind of bigoted replies that he was getting:

SUBJECT:

Bigots and hate mail at Tandem

Last week a mail message was sent out suggesting the formation of a gay employees mail group. I was surprised to discover that this message engendered a lot of vicious replies.

What a wonderful innovation: electronic hate mail, here at Tandem.

One of the replies was particularly offensive: a threat to discover the location of the meeting place for gay Tandem employees and beat them up. The message was anonymous, of course. This is pure bigotry, and a threat to anyone with unpopular opinions and preference. Obviously, I am talking matters of private choice here, the exercise of which is not intrinsically harmful to anyone save possibly the parties freely involved.

I have a suggestion for the author of the violent reply: form a distribution list for bigots and hate mail senders. To further protect your cherished anonymity, I suggest you wear robes made of old sheets and pointed hats. Burning crosses optional.

—Gary Staas

Gary's message, since it was broadcast to everyone, brought the controversy out into the open. The anti-gay prejudice that then surfaced was more restrained. For example:

FROM: BTF.TEST.PQUINN

19JUL83 17:19

TO: D LOCNCAL

SUBJECT: TO GARY: MORE ON BIGOTS, GAYS AND OTHERS

I agree, Gary, bigotry is one of the darker sides of human behavior. But I really think that condoning advertisements for a mail­group based upon sexual-preference (read: practices) sets a very negative precedent. By following the logic of the "Tandem gays" message it's conceivable that we mail viewers/users may be subjected to ads seeking persons who wish to form a group into group-­sex, or into animal-sex, or into child-sex.

These ads may seem extreme but no more extreme than ads for Tandemites into gay-sex.

I feel that respect for the rights of the majority and respect for the reputation of Tandem Computers is equally important to minority rights.

—Peter Quinn

A member of my department responded with the following tongue-in-cheek reply:

FROM: SIMS.CEPUBS.KEITH

TO: D locncal

2IJUL8311:38

SUBJECT: More bigots and others Dear Peter:

Where do you guys get all your ideas for different kinky encounters?

I don't remember any mention that the purpose of the gay mail group was to meet partners for sex, but I guess I'm just a little naive. I'll bet you just knew that was really what it was all about without being told.

And now mail groups for Tandemites who are into orgies, bestiality and child molesting! We know where your mind is, Peter. Unfortunately, the last two practices are illegal, so Tandemites into these things will just have to stay in the closet. As for the orgy mail group, seems like a good idea to me. Anyway, thanks for the suggestions Peter.

Love, Keith

In bringing the subject of anti-gay prejudice out into the open, this controversy allowed many people, straight and gay, to express their solidarity with their gay co­workers and directly argue against prejudice.

Meanwhile, the company's top brass was apparently disturbed by the level of controversy being generated on the mail system. The Gay Mail War was soon punctuated by a "first class" pronunciamento to all employees from Mr. Big, Jimmy Treybig, calling a halt. His message deplored what he termed "unprofessional conduct" but studiously avoided suggesting who was being censured. Soon thereafter a new policy on mail usage was decreed which, among other things, prohibited the use of the mail system to promote "political, religious or other causes." The head bosses were obviously disturbed by the prospect of an uncontrolled free speech area that gave anyone access to all other employees.

More recently a new version of the mail program was put into place which automatically displays the sender's full name on any message. The purpose is to eliminate the sending of anonymous messages. But it's not clear this will work. Clever employees have at times "logged on" under mail IDs other than their own to send out messages.

Overthrowing the bosses: a true story

A co-worker had been suggesting to me that we were being spied upon. The only hard evidence he pointed to, however, was an incident where Al, my rather weird and anti-social supervisor, had stood behind him for a long time watching what he was typing on his VDT, saying nothing. Nonetheless, I did take the precaution of burying anything I didn't want my supervisors to see in the middle of work-related computer files. I had occasionally spent some of my employer's time writing articles on political subjects, and I didn't want these to be discovered.

On one occasion the message "Big Brother is watching" popped up on my screen. "Oh, he's being paranoid again," I thought.

Two days later, as I'm tapping away on the keys, Al enters my cubicle. "I want to talk with you, " he says. In the privacy of the conference room, he shows me a large folder, which, he tells me, is a computer printout of everything in my files. "You've been devious," he says. He tells me he doesn't care about the political content of my writings (he rolls his eyes). He just didn't like the fact that I mixed my own stuff in with the company's data.

He says he has a little program that he uses when he "suspects" someone (he laughs). Essentially, the program searches the directory of all files on the computer system and finds only those files that have been altered by people in our department during the day. It then spits out a list of those files and the times when they were last worked on. Late at night, when no one else was around, Al would print out the contents of all these files to see if what we were doing on company time related to company work.

The next day, Friday, co-workers became more aware of the spying operation as bits of evidence began to surface. Someone found copies of personal files in the bosses' "volume" of the disc memory. Two of the individuals who had been selected for particularly close scrutiny were people who had complained to the Personnel Department about the arbitrary and abusive management in our department. A lady whose cubicle is next to mine tells me that she always immediately erases from disc the letters she writes to her son after she prints them out because she "doesn't want Al to see them."

The computer-operators tell us they had become suspicious of Al's doings. Months before, several women in the building had received anonymous electronic mail messages such as "I love you" etc.—a kind of electronic sexual harassment. The operators had traced these messages to a time at night when only Al could have sent them. The supervisors in our department had become so preoccupied with keeping tabs on people that it began to affect the department's production. Camera-ready copy cannot be printed out and page flats pasted-up for offset printing until the supervisors read the drafts, check the art work, etc. Unread and unapproved manuals were piling up.

The following mail message was soon received by most non-management people in the department, commenting on our bosses' concern with their "authority":

FROM: CEPUBS. WAYNE

26APR83 10:35

RE: THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"It is interesting to reflect on the defecatory habits of the hippopotamus. The male indicates to other hippopotomi the extent of his own territory by defecating all around its perimeter. Outside that ring they can go where they please, but if they come inside it he will fight them to the death."
—From Anthony Day's Management and Machiavelli

That afternoon, Wayne, the author of the above message, saw Al printing out a copy of a personal electronic mail message he had sent to a co-worker. Wayne began inserting the comment "Fuck you, Al" at various points in his files, since he now knew Al was going to probe everywhere. Knots of people talking could be observed most of the day. Little work got done.

The following Monday was May 2nd, 1983, the day after 50,000 workers had demonstrated in support of Solidarnosc in Warsaw. As a member of the Bay Area Solidarity Support Campaign, 1 had been distributing "Solidarnosc" buttons, so I brought some to work with me. People came over to my cubicle on numerous occasions during the day to get buttons. For us, the buttons expressed not only support for the Polish workers but also solidarity with each other, and it enabled us to express this in a way that the bosses couldn't easily oppose.

Meanwhile, Al was preoccupied with printing out Wayne's files. At one point he suddenly noticed the "Fuck you, Al" message. He jumped up from the printer and walked rapidly over to the cubicle of the Production Manager. He grabbed him by the shirt, and all of the bosses then sequestered themselves in the head manager's office (referred to as the "Fuehrerbunker" by department rank­ and-file).

Later that day the bosses left. We found out afterwards that they had decided to concoct an accusation of "conspiring to undermine management authority." They used Wayne's "Thought for the Day" messages, my left-wing political writings and the "Solidarnosc" buttons as evidence. They took this ridiculous story to Jimmy Treybig, who referred them to the vice-president in charge of Personnel.

The next week the vice-president and the head of our building called a meeting with the staff of our department. The VP was cool and paternal in his style. We sat in silence as he gave a smooth harangue: "Political treatises and scurrilous messages are an inappropriate use of capital resources." Then he was interrupted by the senior member of the department, an engineer and self-styled "conservative." "Look," he said, "you're just talking about symptoms. You're not getting at the cause. The real problem is abusive and arbitrary management." He then proceeded to cross-examine Al about his invasion of people's privacy, maintaining "dossiers" to be used against people, etc. One by one, other members of the department punctuated the proceedings with their own indignation.

At the end of the meeting, the top brass announced that a "partial solution was in place" since Jim, the department's head, had "resigned" along with another supervisor. Al's fate was still up in the air, however. As we left the meeting, one of my co-workers commented to me: "I'm not satisfied with the body count."

Al and the Production Manager were demoted soon thereafter and privately urged to look for work elsewhere. They were gone within a couple of months.

Several days after the meeting, some of the computer programs used in manual production were sabotaged. It seems that the bosses who had been fired had VDTs at home and still had access to the computer over the phone lines.

At the end of the meetings with the honchos, the head of our building muttered about the "adversarial relationship" that had been created in our department. As if capitalism isn't based on an "adversarial relationship"!

While "participatory management" may be used by employees to their benefit in situations like the above, we should keep in mind that this is not simply a "gift" from the bosses. The less authoritarian management style exists because some companies see it as a more effective means of gaining cooperation from the workforce in achieving management goals. But it has been seen as "more effective" only in light of the resistance, both passive and active, of workers against more overtly authoritarian management methods. Participatory management does not—and cannot—eliminate the very real conflict of interests between workers and employers. The fact remains that workers don't run the plant or control the funds. This makes conflict inevitable.

Unionism

The direct human solidarity that develops among people who are thrown together in the same workplace is a kind of embryonic unionism. This solidarity of the immediate work group is played out in Silicon Valley in incidents like the one I described above. But in order to have a serious effect on what companies do or contribute to social change, this practice of people being "in union" with each other has to develop into an actual movement, conscious of itself and its purposes, and organized on a mass scale, not just limited to the personal and informal ties of departmental solidarity.

Unionism of the formal, organized sort has only the most feeble existence in the valley at this point in history. Shop organizations do exist in the "dirtiest" end of the business, in chip plants like Signetics, National Semiconductor and Fairchild Camera and Instrument. The United Electrical Workers Union (UE) has groups that are implanted in those workplaces. These groups have no contract with the employer or legal recognition but exist through the agitation and loyalty of groups of workers. Of course, it's not that the UE is opposed to contract unionism and the institutionalized collective bargaining system. It's just that they haven't yet been able to impose that sort of deal on the employers.

Unions with contracts do exist at some of the largest plants in Silicon Valley. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (1AM) has contracts covering workers at Lockheed Space and Missile and FMC, the two largest military contractors in the valley. The 1AM, as is generally true of the existing unions in this country, is dominated by paid officials who work to avoid conflict that would rupture their long-standing collective bar­ gaining relationship with the employers. Instead of fighting the present system, the bureaucratic unions basically accept the status quo and rarely challenge management power on the shop floor or management's "right" to decide what our skills will be used to produce. The union officialdom often act as if the union is their "business," which it is, since their livelihood depends upon its organizational survival in an industrial and political environment that is basically hostile to working people. Thus the leaders of such unions ofter1 talk of the need for "cooperation between labor and capital."

An alternative to this bureaucratic unionism would be the development of unions without paid officials, organized in such a way that their affairs are conducted directly by the rank-and-file. Since they would be run by the people who must work under the conditions prevailing in the shops, such organizations would not be dominated by officials with a stake in "cooperation" with the existing power structure.

There is a sector of opinion among "progressives" that holds that the best interests of the population would be served by cooperation with the high-tech companies of the Silicon Valley type rather than struggle against them. David Talbot, in a piece on the high-tech moguls in Mother Jones ("Fast Times for High-Tech," Mother Jones, December, 1983), chides "left economics" for not "grappling with the central problem of how to stimulate economic growth." Talbot says the labor movement should "be joining forces with the high­growth business sector to make sure that the [government] planning process does not stifle the creative drive of Silicon Valley-type entrepreneurs." Why? Because "it is they, after all, who are giving the economy whatever vitality it has, they who are creating the new jobs." This "neo-liberal" line is just the old trickle-down ideology in Yuppie garments. Within capitalism, "growth" means profits. Thus, Talbot is essentially saying that the way for workers to benefit is by helping the employers make more profit.

But profits in Silicon Valley are made by ignoring workers' health risks and polluting the environment. And competition drives companies to use their profits for automation, to cut their payrolls and to speed-up the remaining jobs.

David Talbot thinks that an alliance with the high tech moguls is needed to bolster "America's competitiveness" in the world market. But the companies' search for "competitiveness" may not benefit their workers. "Competitiveness" was the motive when Atari and Qume (a subsidiary of ITT) closed down their manufacturing operations in Silicon Valley, putting hundreds of workers in the unemployment lines. They found it more profitable to shift operations to Taiwan. Capital today is international. It will set down wherever the most profit can be made. It has no loyalty to workers because they are of a particular nationality.

Instead of supporting "our" bosses, it makes more sense for electronics workers in the U.S. to develop contacts and solidarity with high tech workers in Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan and Germany and other sites in the global factory.

Instead of "cooperation between labor and capital," what electronics workers need is more militant struggle against the bosses, to protect their health, to fight growing unemployment through a shorter workweek, and to fight for a different society, where we won't be forced by wage­-labor to work for the generals' death machine or the vultures at BofA and Citibank.

The development of revolutionary, self-­managed unionism is needed not only be­ cause a more militant solidarity is necessary to gain whatever we can within the present social system, but also to pose the possibility of electronics workers taking over the industry and putting its technological prowess to uses that will be more beneficial to human beings.