Accommodation to the needs of foreign companies has been the hallmark of the Malaysian government's industrialization program: the tax free status of "pioneer" industries, recently extended for companies that were due to graduate; continued protection from the "threat" of national unions organizing the electrical workers; refusal to set a legal minimum wage or to correct the imbalance between men's and women's wages. When foreign companies wanted to institute multiple shifts to keep their expensive machinery operating around the clock, Malaysia abandoned its labor law forbidding women to work between the hours of 10pm and 5am.
### High-tech nationalist fantasies
Despite the fact that this new "Malaysian" industry is practically 100% foreign owned, and making products that are not intended for Malaysian use, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment has become infected with a high-tech nationalist fantasy of development:
"We have been impressed by the importance of technological development for economic growth... ultimately, technological development will be accorded its rightful place in national planning because technical capabilities accord nations increased capacity for self-determination." This kind of hope for economic and political salvation through technology is certainly widespread in the nations with sophisticated technological capabilities, and many wax romantic for a new industrial Golden Age propelled by the new information technologies. But these techno-dreamers, in both the United States and Malaysia, have glossed over some rather key elements in their formula for success. Little is discussed about the kind of jobs that are being created behind Malaysia's rising GNP numbers. In fact, the clean sleek image of high-tech jobs clashes with reality for many workers: in the United States, where health and safety institutions have collected data on workers and cite as * This article first appeared in AMPO Japan-Asia Quarterly Review, Vol. 23, No. 1.
JIM STOCKTON T he import substitute formula of development, implemented after independence, did little more than continue the British colonial pattern of dependence on raw material exports (rubber and tin originally, and later palm oil and timber), while doing nothing to alter the colonial pattern of racial division in the economy. By the end of the 60s, widespread unrest had built up to the point of eruption. In 1968, the government passed the Investment Incentives Act, thus embarking on an aggressive policy of wooing foreign capital for exportoriented manufacturing.
The goal of rapid economic growth was in fact necessary for the racial goals of the NEP, to bring ethnic Malays (bumiputras) into the mainstream of the economy, for the government knew quite well that Malaysia's Chinese and Indian merchant class would more readily share a growing pie with the Malays than a limited one.
### Low wages attract
Investment
The policy met with spectacular success in attracting investment in sectors that were labor-intensive - and indeed "low wages" is the reason most cited by investors for their move to Malaysia. This is not however to deny the importance of the many incentives offered by the government - tax shelters, repatriation of profits, political stability including stringent controls on labor, and low environmental standards. Global competition and management/labor struggles at home are also key factors.
The development of free trade zones, first around Penang and then Kuala Lumpur, drew thousands of people from the 20 surrounding agricultural areas into the booming industrial sectors. By the end of the 80s, manufacturing accounted for $26.9b or about 48.4% of all exports. In terms of the domestic economy, manufacturing had even overtaken the agricultural sector by the mid 80s to form the largest single contributor to GDP; and it has continued to grow steadily from 19.7% of GDP in 1985 to 25.6% by 1989. Employment has followed a similar track; those working in agriculture, forestry and fishing declined from about 53% of total employment in 1970 to an estimated 35% in 1990, with the manufacturing sector growing to provide almost 20% of employment with even more people being absorbed into the tertiary sectors including services and retail. Most workers young women
For many reasons, most of which hinge on the socialization of women to be respective of authority and therefore more easily dominated, the vast majority of these new workers are young women: 88% of textile workers are women, 85% in food production and around 80-85% in the electronics industry. If manufacturing has been the spearhead of Malaysian economic growth, the outstanding sector is clearly electronics and electric products — in economic terms across the board, in capital investment, employment numbers and sources of income. In 1988, some 244 electronics projects employed some 107,578 people or about 23% of the total industrial sector (followed by textiles with about 17%, food manufacturing with over 10% and the forestry industry with just less than 10%). The world's leading consumer electronics and semi-conductor firms from Japan and the United States moved the lower value-added, labor intensive end of their production offshore in search
International Viewpoint #214 • October 14, 1991
their goal the protection of workers health, occupation illness rates in the semi-conductor industry are three times higher than the national average for all manufacturing. The California Department of Industrial Relations surveyed the industry to find out that nearly 1/2 of these illnesses were due to "systematic poisoning" - long term exposure to the highly toxic chemicals used in the processing of computer chips - an ominous warning for the Malaysian workers who have far less government or labor union monitoring and protection. This also raises concerns about the health of the surrounding community and environment. The most basic question of what is being produced for whom seems to be lost in the rush to achieve "technological capabilities... for self-determination."
The roots of the high-tech "revolution" can be traced directly back to the know-how that emerged from the US military research programs of World War 2. In fact, the high-tech industry in the United States has never weaned itself from government military spending; and the US remains the major destination for Malaysian produced chips. Thus, the notion of connecting high-tech growth with national self-determination is at best an exercise in self-deception.
Perhaps the Malaysian elite plans to follow the Japanese and NIE model of transferring technological know-how into the manufacture of consumer electronics. Indeed, market researchers have pointed out that nearly 55% of Japanese semiconductor sales are geared for consumer products, compared with only 15% for US companies.
### Precarious success
However, high-tech success is precarious under the intense competition of a shrinking world economy, as the recent faltering of the South Korean economy testifies — to say nothing of the social, political, and environmental costs generated by South Korea's path of development, nor of its dependence on technology supplied by Japan.
Outside of these exports of the Japanese semi-conductor industry to the Asian NIEs and to their major market in the US, the vital domestic consumer is in industrial electronics. Japan is the world leader in computer-based automatic manufacturing, and the epitome of this is the vast army of robots pressing out automobiles in Japan at the staggering rate of over 13 million a year. It was through such economies of scale that Japan could afford to invest the capital and research necessary for development of automated manufacturing.
That such accelerated production could be repeated is very doubtful — the strain on the world's resources and environment would be unimaginable. Already, Malaysia's Proton Saga car enterprise has found
MALAYSIA
HE'LL FIRE HE WONT US IF WE LET US ORGANIZ COMPLAIN OR NEGOTIATE <= it necessary to export in order to find a large enough market, and the price must be subsidized in order to sell - imagine a Third World government subsidizing a First World consumer.
The central issue plaguing the Malaysian government's equation of high-tech and self-determination is the question of whose self-determination will be increased. All indications from the government have shown that the workers in the electronics industry are not a part of the equation.
The drawn out struggle that the electronics workers at RCA/Harris Solid State continue to face in order to establish their company union epitomizes the relationship between workers, their government, and their foreign employers. After a decade and a half of protecting the "pioneer industry" of electronics by withholding government approval of unions with the registrar of Trade Unions, the Minister of Labor somewhat suddenly announced in 1988 that the industry was strong and stable enough for the formation of trade unions. The immediate uproar from the MAEI along with the Japanese giants put the government in a tight spot, for the pressure for the decision was connected to Malaysian access to the US market.
### Unions accepted
In order to maintain GSP favored trading privileges with the US, Malaysia announced the acceptance of unions in the electronics industry, at least in policy. Jolted, the multinationals, led by Motorola and Matsushita, threatened to move operations to Thailand or China; and workers were threatened with dismissal and harassed by an increase in security monitoring of their activities. One US company offered a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken to any worker who would sell out the names of co-workers who signed for union membership; Hitachi offered cash bonuses for those who
HE DOESNT LIKE US TO ASK QUESTIONS , OR MAKE SUGGESTIONS would pen letters to the Labor Minister rejecting the formation of a national union.
In response, the Labor Ministry modified its statement to allow only for the formation of in-house unions. Thus the application for a National Union of Electronic Industry Workers was not accepted by the RTU. Yet this compromise allowed for some unionizing, and the government registered the first in-house union, the RCA Workers Union, in January 1989.
Grudging recognition from government
With the grudging recognition from the government, the fight for a union shifted back to the company site since RCA refused to grant recognition. In the months that passed, as RCA obstructed the unionizing process, the whole semi-conductor division of RCA was sold to Harris Solid State, forcing the registration process to start all over again.
This tactic had such success in forestalling the union that the Harris management tried it again by terminating then transferring all workers to Harris Advanced Technology, a mere change of company name. A formal complaint filed in February 1990 is being fought by Harris, while they have begun to intimidate and harass workers associated with the union. At the end of September 1990, the company succeeded in isolating 21 union activists and dismissed them. As the Malaysian government is clearly constrained from supporting its workers by its dependence on foreign capital, they have done little to help the workers in this case. Their equation of national self-determination and high-tech seems to leave out the over 100,000 workers who actually produce the technology.
The rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively is not an abstract freedom - real threats to workers' health and safety and he lock of standards or any 21 clear support from a government with
MALAYSIA divided loyalties, is a matter of survival in the high-tech arena. As was noted earlier, "systematic poisoning" accounts for nearly one half of the high illness rate among Californian semi-conductor workers.
This reality runs counter to the clean image of high-tech and even workers' own perceptions: encased in the air conditioned spaces and "clean rooms" of semiconductor production, workers are deceived about safety. Like the protective suits the workers wear, the environment is not designed to protect the workers from dangerous chemicals, but to protect the delicate chips from human contamination.
The solvents, hazardous chemicals, and even radioactive gas used during the manufacture, assembly, and testing of semiconductors present a constant danger for the workers. Furthermore, these are used in various levels and combinations depending on the actual factory and little is known about how they interact togethCI.
### Caution the norm
Perhaps because there are so many hazardous chemicals, strict and constant caution has been the norm, and few major incidents have been reported throughout the industry. An outstanding exception in Malaysia was the 1981 explo- Malavsia was the 1981 exolosion of testing equipment at a Harris Semiconductor plant which exposed workers to radioactive krypton-85 gas.
The health of workers is an extremely broad concern, connected to many factors of living and work proanization living and work organization, and comparing workers in an industrialized country to those in Malaysia cannot be done directly. The average worker is young and from the rural areas, and she probably has inadequate knowledge or preparation for industrial work — this was especially true in the early stages of the industry.
The long hours of tedious repetitive work, the shifts, especially late night work, the fast pace of work controlled by machines, and management pressure to reach work quotas have all added up to constant complaints among workers of stress and fatigue.
Electronics industries in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia have all experienced frequent reports of mass hysteria breaking out among workers. Many factors must be involved in such a phenomenon, including cultural dislocation, job dissatisfaction, accumulated stress, and some researchers have suggested that exposure to toxic chemicals plays an important role.
Often subtle and complex, the effects of 22 exposure to toxic chemicals over a long • period of time, chemical injuries are confusing — they are not necessarily detected immediately, so are not perceived as dangerous. But trace toxins are stored.up in fatty tissues for years before they are released by weight loss, injury, or just saturation. The symptoms then can be indistinct and difficult to trace back to source. A health study in the US released in 1986 by the Digital Equipment Corp, which focussed on workers who process microchips, pointed out the complexity of these problems and lack of medical knowledge about the industry.
Most alarming among the many revelations of health risks was the 39% rate of miscarriage, twice the normal rate, among the female workers in wafer-etching areas.
Ten to fifteen years of workers experience in the semi-conductor industry in Malaysia have not turned up any systematic medical study on the effects on women workers — itself a powerful argument for a national industry-wide union to coordinate such urgent research.
However, independent women's groups have begun to uncover disturbing incidents. Since the summer of 1989, four women workers at the Texas Instruments'
See _OW: THIGH Materials and Control Plant, in the Un Klang Free Trade Zone near Kuala Lumpur, have died.
All of the women had been working in the plant for a minimum of ten years: each suffered serious pains and weight loss for a long period before a sudden worsening of their condition; each had been under the care of a company physician, but none were told there could be a connection with the chemicals they worked with, and the company has completely ruled out that the deaths were work related.
Workers express worries
Workers from the TI plant when interviewed expressed worries over a range of irregularities. Some workers feared a moulding compound used in the semiconductor area, with a warning on the label that repeated and prolonged exposure to its contents (silica and antimony oxide) may cause lung irritation.
Norliah Rusli, who died at 29 in November 1989, had worked for the company for ten years, and had worked in the mold room of the semi-conductor plant.
International Viewpoint #214 • October 14, 1991
Her family noted that she suffered pains for a while, but suddenly she deteriorated with swollen joints and her chest felt redhot. Margaret Joseph, 40, had worked for 16 years and 8 months before being medically boarded out of the company. She died in 1990 from lung fibrosis.
Some workers had also been concerned about exposure to the cleaning agent Trichloroethane, used while operating a manual degreasing machine and also in the disc press area. Exposure to trichloroethane is thought to cause cancer and reproductive problems.!
On July 10, 1989, Azizah Sajak died at the age of 28 after chemotherapy for cancer of the uterus. Her father claims that she had been ill for almost two years. She had worked for ten years at TI. Loon Siew Foong underwent surgery for cancer of the colon with hepatic metastasis, but died within the year, aged 30, after 14 years.
Sent home to die
Such stories cannot accurately reflect the extent of chemical exposure throughout the whole industry. Yet, the women's groups who are reaching out to isolated industry workers emphasize that many more have been sent home to die — back to their villages, back to their families — but with no explanation of the medical complications, no compensation, and no responsi- compensation, and no responsibility taken by the people who are in the best position to know. Concerns about the personal exposure of the workers to industry toxins are quite urgent yet seem to be brushed over in the government's effort to ensure an attractive climate for ensure an attractive climate for foreign investment. These concerns, however, can be further generalized to a danger in the environment and the surrounding communities. Hazardous chemicals in the plant become hazardous wastes after they are used.
In the Malaysian government's 1985 Report on Environment Quality, a reference was made to "other liquid wastes such as spent solvent, large volumes of which generated by the electronic/ semiconductor industries were accumulated and stored."
Yet earlier in the same report, it casually identified treatment and storage of industrial wastes as a problem, and "existing domestic landfill sites are inadequate and environmentally unsuitable to receive such toxic residues."
The lack of attention to this potentially disastrous threat seems to be exemplified by an incident in January 1991 involving a little boy who was walking outside one of 1. For details on dangers from chemical exposure see Asia Monitor Resource Center's "Health Hazards in the Electronics Industry", from which the cartoons accompanying this article are taken.
This worker is in danger.
This worker has some protection.
Kuala Lumpur's FTZs, carrying his father's lunch. The boy slipped and fell into a drainage ditch, which led to his death. However, the boy did not drown in the liquid waste; newspaper reports confirm that he ignited when he fell into the ditch and died from burns.
In the US and Japan, investigations into the electronics and semiconductor industry have revealed that extensive environmental pollution poses a significant risk to surrounding residents.
An IBM facility in California was listed in 1984 by the US Environmental Protection Agency as one of the country's worst polluters, leaking a chemical plume into the underground water system that stretches for five miles. And ongoing measures of chlorofluorocarbons, which are destroying the global ozone layer, have pointed to Silicon Valley as registering higher than any place in the world.
In Japan, a 1990 government survey found that one out of every 13 water wells across the country was contaminated with organic chlorine solutions commonly used by the high-tech industry.
The costs of ignoring these environmental disasters may not be paid by the corporations whose activities cause them, but the increases in birth defects, in cancer rates and the poisoning of workers and of entire communities must be borne by someone.
Like the "economic miracles" of South Korea and Taiwan, the success of the Malaysian economy has been judged quite selectively, primarily using the large growth in GNP.
So, while many young women have found jobs in the booming electronics industry and have increased their skills with technology, and their incomes, there are high costs being paid silently and painfully by increasing numbers.
Repression, dislocation and damage
On a large scale, political and labor repression, social dislocation and environmental damage are all part of the process of rapid industrialization which don't show up in the GNP figures — sometimes they are even counted as a plus, such as an increase in spending on pollution abatement equipment.
High-tech development has brought wealth and prestige to some, and they will continue to pursue their program with little concern for the hidden or forgotten costs. But for another group of Malaysians, the logic of development has been more accurately described by an organizer around women's issues:
"Development has come to mean mindless consumerism and tremendous waste. Earlier one produced to consume. Now it seems people have to keep consuming so that production can go on. Common wisdom and common sense have been made to stand on their heads." *