Silicon Valley "Pigs" - Where's the Outrage?

April 13, 2005
Silicon Valley “Pigs” – Where’s The Outrage?
by Alex Walker

JOHN STEINBECK, author of “The Grapes of Wrath,” would have loved this.

April 4^th - the New York Times reported to the world that, unless volunteers raised $500,000, the public libraries in Steinbeck’s hometown of Salinas, California would close.

April 5^th - the very next day, the San Jose Mercury News reported that right up the road from Salinas, Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel, in addition to his $600,000 salary, received $231 million through stock options.

Nobody was outraged.

April 11^th- Mercury News reports “record profits” for Silicon Valley Companies in 2004, including 10 companies sitting on $73 billion in cash.

April 12^th- the very next day, Mercury News reports the tech sector laid off another 59,537 workers in the first quarter of 2005. John Chambers, CEO of Cisco-Systems has “vowed not to hire until revenue per employee reached $700,000 again.” But on March 14^th we learned this very same John “tough guy” Chambers cashed out stock options worth $14.9 million.

This is on top of HP chief, Carleton Fiorina, walking away with $21 million “severance” after being fired!

Where is the outrage?

Where is the so-called American "Left?" There was a time when these guys would have been ashamed. But now politicians, professors, preachers, and a supine “free press” insists these guys “need” more money and an "incentive" for figuring out "innovative" new ways to... do what? Well, they need the "incentive" to figure out innovative new ways to make more money.

I am a professional computer programmer who just happened to be here to eyewitness these unbelievable events. Santa Clara County alone dropped 200,000 jobs in the dot-com bust.  One half of the tech workforce has “disappeared” -- moved away, switched to lower-paying non-tech jobs, or simply given up looking for regular work.  $2 trillion in paper wealth was lost.  Both the Merc and the San Francisco Chronicle have reported these figures many times.  In a March retrospective on the fifth anniversary of the long tech slide, they wrote:

“During the boom, Silicon Valley was infallible. The apostates who dared question the utterances of tech gods like Scott McNealy and John Chambers were simply told, ‘You don't get it. It's a New Economy. The old rules no longer apply.’ “

Let's be fair. It’s not so surprising people said these things during the boom. What is really amazing is that five years into the bust they still talk like that. Pope John Paul’s judgment is debated. But John Chambers is still infallible.

RAJ JAYADEV once worked for Carly Fiorina.  Well actually, Raj worked as a temporary worker for Manpower, Inc., which had a contract with Hewlett-Packard. Raj’s story was told in an independent documentary film "Secrets of Silicon Valley," by Berkeley filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman is a shocking exposé of the reality behind the hype of Silicon Valley by revealing the reality of an unseen and unacknowledged army of immigrant workers. Hired by Manpower to work in a Hewlett-Packard assembly plant, Raj and his fellow workers started a petition drive to protest being shorted on their paychecks. The drive got results: Manpower began paying up in full and on time. But when Jayadev raised health and safety concerns at the same factory, he discovered the limits of HP – Clinton-Gore “New Democrat” liberalism: he was fired.

I am a progressive working man.  I also happen to be an African-American who strongly believes in labor rights, civil rights and women’s rights. My political frustration is almost more than I can bear. People reading this around the country and around the world will probably think I’m lying or at least exaggerating. If I didn't live here I probably wouldn’t believe it either. 200,000 lost jobs? $2 trillion in lost wealth? Short pay? Unsafe working conditions? And isn’t this the super “blue” San Francisco Bay area? They must be rioting in the streets! Surely, at least the world-famous San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley “Left” is preaching revolution!

Nope.

Today’s “Left” is obsessed with Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and Palestine on the other side of the world. During the first week of Mr. Bush's War the radicals all but shut down the City of San Francisco. But they ain't gonna lift a finger to protest schools and libraries closing while one single doofus corporate bureaucrat like Terry Semel (who, by the way, is not even a real techie, but a Hollywood movie mogul brought in from Warner brothers), pockets a quarter billion bucks in one year.

Conservatives, though utterly immoral themselves, push the “culture war” over “moral values” to the top of the domestic agenda.

Some voices on the “Left” congratulate themselves for supposedly defying “political correctness” to say we should quit the “culture war” and talk about the class war. I agree. But do they propose attacking the likes of Fiorina, Chambers, and Semel? No! Invariably, the very first proposal out of their mouths is… surrender on civil rights and women’s rights!

Finally, as if all this wasn’t enough, I have to put up with mainstream civil rights groups like the San Jose/Silicon Valley NAACP and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH openly soliciting and accepting corporate contributions (hence Jesse’s photo-op below with Fiorina).

Here is a sample of Silicon Valley stories from just the last couple of months:

• HP Chief, Carly Fiorina’s $21 million Severance Pay
• Dot Com Bust Anniversary – 200,000 Jobs Lost; $2 Trillion in Wealth Lost
• Cisco-Systems Chief, John Chambers Gets $14.9 Million
• Tech Workers – Overworked and Angry –  No Vacations; 100 Hours a Week
• Salinas Libraries Closing for Lack of $500,000 (April 4^th)
• Yahoo Chief, Terry Semel -- $231 Million in One Year (April 5^th)
• HP “Acting” Chief, Robert Wayman -- $58,000 a Day
• Record Profits in 2004 - 10 Valley companies with $73 billion in Cash (April 11^th)
• 59,537 Tech-Sector Layoffs During First Quarter 2005 (April 12^th)

Socialism is dead, we are told. Maybe, but I say we could sure use some leaders like old Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas, and Upton Sinclair right now to confront and shame these shameless pigs.

About Alex Walker

Alex Walker has been a software engineer in New York, and Massachusetts before settling in Northern California’s Silicon Valley. While living and working in the Hudson Valley of New York he served as vice-president of the Northern Dutchess NAACP and co-chair of the Dutchess County Committee Against Racism in Poughkeepsie, New York. As a freelance writer he has contributed to The Poughkeepsie Journal and Taconic Newspapers in the Hudson Valley, the Somerville Journal and the Somerville Community News in Somerville, Massachusetts, and the Milpitas Post in Milpitas, California.