Friday, Sep 5, 2008
New economy, old economy -- what's the difference when you're working on the assembly line? Not much, say the makers of "Secrets of Silicon Valley."
May 1, 2001 | If your idea of a technology sweatshop is a cubicle farm where 25-year-old programmers swill caffeine to stay up coding all night, Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow have some footage they'd like you to see.
In their new documentary, "Secrets of Silicon Valley," the Berkeley, Calif., filmmakers -- best known for their documentary series "Blacks and Jews: Ambivalent Allies" -- reveal the underbelly of an industry that takes pains to keep its worst-paid workers out of the spotlight while it gentrifies them right out of their neighborhoods.
The film, which is screening in Bay Area and Boston theaters this month while the filmmakers seek broadcast distribution, paints Silicon Valley as a region divided between clean-scrubbed executives spouting hubristic blarney about the information age and temporary assembly-line workers on the industrial grind.
How did you decide to do a film about Silicon Valley?
Alan Snitow: Living here in the Bay Area, we've been subjected for years to unrelenting hype about technology and the Internet being the Second Coming -- all people will benefit, and any individual can become a billionaire with hard work and a good idea.
Deborah Kaufman: The media here has been a part of this hype machine. And it's really unfortunate that the criticism is only beginning with the NASDAQ fall. But maybe that's an opportunity to look with more clearheadedness at what's happened.
Silicon Valley really hasn't been treated in all of its nuance and complexity. There are a lot of stereotypes about geeks, but there is zero representation of everybody else who lives there. There is a rich multicultural community, immigrants, all kinds of people living in San Jose and Santa Clara, but you never hear about them.
What's the significance of the industry myth that there is no physical production in Silicon Valley, that it's all about bits and bytes, ones and zeroes?
D.K.: It's part of the entire worldview of flexibility of the new economy. It's about not allowing the reality of manufacturing and assembly and exploited workers to come out to the public. I think that they [the companies] want to cover it up. I didn't really think about who made my computer or printer before we started this film. And now I can't look at a cellphone or any gadget without thinking that human hands made this.
A.S.: There is an active silencing in the industry. People who are working on these assembly lines are not a part of American democracy. They have no freedom of speech. For them to say that their conditions are intolerable is to invite immediate termination and economic blackballing.
The best metaphor that we've heard about it is that it's like feudalism. The castle is a brand-name company like Hewlett-Packard. Inside the castle, you get stock options. You get paid well. You get health benefits. And then outside the walls of the castle are the temporary workers and the manufacturing employees. Those people are exposed to the elements, to the marauding hordes, the vandals. That is the nature of our economic organization now. That is what is happening in this country and around the world.
And the moat around the castle is the Manpower temporary agency. So a company like Hewlett-Packard can say: We're not employing these people; it's the subcontractor, or it's the temporary agency.
The temp economy just keeps growing because it's cheaper. You don't have to pay health benefits. No one has job security. Jobs can be eliminated on a minute's notice. If you create an economy that has that kind of "flexibility," then you save a lot of money and that money goes into annual reports, which increases your stock price.
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