A labor organizer in the Philippines
My name is Romie Manan. I came to this country in 1979 from the Philippines. Maybe a little bit of an overview about my experience in the Philippines. I was a labor organizer in the Philippines in the communications industry until I left the Philippines in 1979 and in that same year, I started working in the electronics industry at the National Semiconductor in Santa Clara, California. I worked from 1979 to 1992. The majority of the workers in that particular plant, a big number, are Filipinos. The electronics industry to our colleagues is pretty new in that time period.
Seventies and early eighties, that's when workers from Stockton for example, they are farm workers. They move from that area to Santa Clara or San Jose area to the Bay area just to work in the electronics industry.
And at that time electronics were booming and all kinds of jobs and all kinds of workers would be able to get a job here easily although the wage was not very much good at that time. It's only two dollars and eighty five cents. That's how I started.
I was an operator. production operator in a bipolar department. We call it wafers. That's the main product. I started washing and cleaning these materials. The way to do it is, we have a sink there where we dip those materials in chemicals. It can be sulfuric acid, hydrofluoric acid.
Then there's another process after that, after cleaning those materials. We load them to different machines. One example is the epitaxial machine. These epitaxial machines will use all kinds of chemical and other gases. The one gas that I remember very much is dichlorosilane, arsine gas. Those are two main gases that's used for that process. These are dangerous, really dangerous.
Finger burn accident
I had an accident with a hydrofluoric acid HF and I have rubber gloves. Maybe there's a pin hole in my rubber gloves and it's leaking through and this is what I got. I burn my fingers.
Actually it doesn't melt your skin and it takes a few hours before you could even feel that you had acid burn. And on that particular day when I went home that night, I didn't even feel anything until I was already in bed but I felt a burning sensation in my fingers.
I called up a national semiconductor. Since it's already late, early in the morning I spoke to the head of security. I told them that I had an acid burn that needed to be seen by a doctor. Oh this is one thing that the security head told me that we can only attend to if there is something like blood that we see that we can attend to your case but since it's not, you have to go to the doctor. So I went to the hospital.
And even the doctor that attended to my case or the hospital, they didn't really have a proper knowledge about acid burns because at the time everything might probably be so new in the electronics industry here that even hospitals don't have training in treating acid burns.
The training is “Okay wash it for 15 minutes if you get split in your eyes.” Those are the types of training that we get during those times. Very simplified procedure, very simplified steps.
A leaflet in the restroom
The big difference is in the Philippines we have a union. We were unionized and I'm one of the officers of the local union that we represented in the communication industry.
The first time I heard about the labor union organizing effort at National Semiconductor was a leaflet that I saw inside one of the restrooms. I read the leaflet and that's how I learned to join the UE(United Electrical Workers) organizing committee. They put all those reading materials in restrooms. So that same week I spoke to David Bacon about it. Let's do it openly. I said “Don't just leave your leaflet inside the restroom.”
So from that time on, we give our leaflets to the workers. right where the workers their cars when they approach the gate Yeah we give them the reading materials from the union.
I started at 2 dollars and 85 cents per hour and then when I joined the organizing committee in that same year in 79, we protested against the company. A group of workers did so we were able to get the cost of living increased. Thirty five cents an hour and then again a few months later, just to maybe control the issue, they gave us another thirty five cents again. because that's too low. The two dollar eighty five cents at the time was very low.
In 1992 they closed down all the departments at National Semiconductor. We were the last ones to be at National Semiconductor. That's when they move all our jobs to Texas.
I know that there will be pressure from the company. In my case as a Philippine organizer I know that feeling already. The reason I think why they didn't fire me as much as they wanted to do is because of the support of so many Filipinos. When I started working with David in the organizing committee, our big number of the people who signed up in the union were Filipinos.
That's always one big issue that we didn't have the representation by way of having a labor union. People have the tendency not to speak out even during meetings so every department has their own human resource manager for one department. It's compartmentalized so whatever goes on with that department it's within the confines of that department only. When you have a meeting that's the only time you could address your grievance against the abusive supervisors, the working conditions, how safe it is.
Please accept my solidarity
My health is very poor. They call it Charcot-Marie-Tooth(CMT). It's a polyneuropathy and my lower extremities, my legs and my hands are very weak. I can fall in any direction so I have to use my cane. I'm diabetic also.
What I would like to tell the company, my old employer National Semiconductor, is this. This was so many years ago. But what we did 30 or 40 years ago, whatever exposure we had to different kinds of chemicals, it's now, in the present, that we're feeling all these results. The results of working in the electronics industry and working around different kinds of chemicals.
I work as an organizer in the Philippines and I recognize the desire of workers in other countries such as you have in South Korea. Please accept my solidarity with all your struggles. As workers, you have to really fight tooth and nail against these abusive companies in the semiconductor industries. That's the only way to protect your body and yourself from getting sick while working in the semiconductor industry.
Interviewer Media Cuckoo
Writer Lim Dayun
Painter Park Jeongwon
A labor organizer in the Philippines
My name is Romie Manan. I came to this country in 1979 from the Philippines. Maybe a little bit of an overview about my experience in the Philippines. I was a labor organizer in the Philippines in the communications industry until I left the Philippines in 1979 and in that same year, I started working in the electronics industry at the National Semiconductor in Santa Clara, California. I worked from 1979 to 1992. The majority of the workers in that particular plant, a big number, are Filipinos. The electronics industry to our colleagues is pretty new in that time period.
Seventies and early eighties, that's when workers from Stockton for example, they are farm workers. They move from that area to Santa Clara or San Jose area to the Bay area just to work in the electronics industry.
And at that time electronics were booming and all kinds of jobs and all kinds of workers would be able to get a job here easily although the wage was not very much good at that time. It's only two dollars and eighty five cents. That's how I started.
I was an operator. production operator in a bipolar department. We call it wafers. That's the main product. I started washing and cleaning these materials. The way to do it is, we have a sink there where we dip those materials in chemicals. It can be sulfuric acid, hydrofluoric acid.
Then there's another process after that, after cleaning those materials. We load them to different machines. One example is the epitaxial machine. These epitaxial machines will use all kinds of chemical and other gases. The one gas that I remember very much is dichlorosilane, arsine gas. Those are two main gases that's used for that process. These are dangerous, really dangerous.
Finger burn accident
I had an accident with a hydrofluoric acid HF and I have rubber gloves. Maybe there's a pin hole in my rubber gloves and it's leaking through and this is what I got. I burn my fingers.
Actually it doesn't melt your skin and it takes a few hours before you could even feel that you had acid burn. And on that particular day when I went home that night, I didn't even feel anything until I was already in bed but I felt a burning sensation in my fingers.
I called up a national semiconductor. Since it's already late, early in the morning I spoke to the head of security. I told them that I had an acid burn that needed to be seen by a doctor. Oh this is one thing that the security head told me that we can only attend to if there is something like blood that we see that we can attend to your case but since it's not, you have to go to the doctor. So I went to the hospital.
And even the doctor that attended to my case or the hospital, they didn't really have a proper knowledge about acid burns because at the time everything might probably be so new in the electronics industry here that even hospitals don't have training in treating acid burns.
The training is “Okay wash it for 15 minutes if you get split in your eyes.” Those are the types of training that we get during those times. Very simplified procedure, very simplified steps.
A leaflet in the restroom
The big difference is in the Philippines we have a union. We were unionized and I'm one of the officers of the local union that we represented in the communication industry.
The first time I heard about the labor union organizing effort at National Semiconductor was a leaflet that I saw inside one of the restrooms. I read the leaflet and that's how I learned to join the UE(United Electrical Workers) organizing committee. They put all those reading materials in restrooms. So that same week I spoke to David Bacon about it. Let's do it openly. I said “Don't just leave your leaflet inside the restroom.”
So from that time on, we give our leaflets to the workers. right where the workers their cars when they approach the gate Yeah we give them the reading materials from the union.
I started at 2 dollars and 85 cents per hour and then when I joined the organizing committee in that same year in 79, we protested against the company. A group of workers did so we were able to get the cost of living increased. Thirty five cents an hour and then again a few months later, just to maybe control the issue, they gave us another thirty five cents again. because that's too low. The two dollar eighty five cents at the time was very low.
In 1992 they closed down all the departments at National Semiconductor. We were the last ones to be at National Semiconductor. That's when they move all our jobs to Texas.
I know that there will be pressure from the company. In my case as a Philippine organizer I know that feeling already. The reason I think why they didn't fire me as much as they wanted to do is because of the support of so many Filipinos. When I started working with David in the organizing committee, our big number of the people who signed up in the union were Filipinos.
That's always one big issue that we didn't have the representation by way of having a labor union. People have the tendency not to speak out even during meetings so every department has their own human resource manager for one department. It's compartmentalized so whatever goes on with that department it's within the confines of that department only. When you have a meeting that's the only time you could address your grievance against the abusive supervisors, the working conditions, how safe it is.
Please accept my solidarity
My health is very poor. They call it Charcot-Marie-Tooth(CMT). It's a polyneuropathy and my lower extremities, my legs and my hands are very weak. I can fall in any direction so I have to use my cane. I'm diabetic also.
What I would like to tell the company, my old employer National Semiconductor, is this. This was so many years ago. But what we did 30 or 40 years ago, whatever exposure we had to different kinds of chemicals, it's now, in the present, that we're feeling all these results. The results of working in the electronics industry and working around different kinds of chemicals.
I work as an organizer in the Philippines and I recognize the desire of workers in other countries such as you have in South Korea. Please accept my solidarity with all your struggles. As workers, you have to really fight tooth and nail against these abusive companies in the semiconductor industries. That's the only way to protect your body and yourself from getting sick while working in the semiconductor industry.
Interviewer Media Cuckoo
Writer Lim Dayun
Painter Park Jeongwon