The Silicon Valley Of Dreams Analysis

In Pellow and Park’s piece “The Silicon Valley of Dreams (2002),” their main argument entails this idea that the “periphery” of the production work that takes place in Silicon Valley is disproportionally made up of immigrants and women of color. Not only this but they also received less than a living wage, were only hired as temporary workers, and due to the lack of unions, these workers received little to no benefits and were forced to work in hazardous conditions. To support this main idea about the “periphery” of production work in Silicon Valley, Pellow and Park refer to many different stories of workers in which these workers were severely underpaid and were in constant threat of being fired if they made any noise about the hazardous …show more content…
Though my view on this may be skewed as a Computer Engineering major who has worked with a lot of the materials and equipment mentioned in the reading. Because of this, I can verify some of these hazardous materials. I agree that people/workers have the right to ask their employer to look into and/or provide some kind of safety equipment/training on how to properly handle them without needing to fear they might get fired just for asking. Along with the fact that Pellow and Park point out that some of the companies’ practices allowed went against the United States basic safety regulations that were put in place. Though I do agree with the article, I did find a possible flaw in their argument. One example that was brought up multiple times was the solder. Yes, a lot of solder that is used is lead based which has been found to be quite dangerous for humans and should have safety precautions for it. Even though we know how dangerous lead is now, but I am not sure if the companies back then knew how dangerous lead was. For example, a lot of the things used to be made of lead, like paints and piping, but it wasn’t until the late 1900s that these laws regulating lead was put in place. Similarly, I think this might apply to some of the other materials used as simply a lack of knowledge on the extent of how dangerous some of these things were, but that’s just playing devil’s advocate. Along with this, though this is not specific to this article alone, is the fact that the reading only shows/talks about the victims side of the story. I just find that if these readings show the other side, in this case the companies view, it might make an even more convincing