Barriers and union struggles in the electronics sector

The Mobile Social Congress , the alternative congress to the Mobile World Congress organized by SETEM Catalunya , took place last week in Barcelona, ​​coinciding with the great international telephony event.

As part of the alternative programming, last Wednesday a day of talks and round tables was held at the Barcelona Contemporary Culture Center (CCCB) to focus on those problems in the electronics and technology industry that we often do not take into account because they are too far away.

One of these topics was the barriers and impediments faced by union struggles in countries such as Indonesia or the Philippines , key to the supply chains of the electronics sector.

The round table, moderated by journalist and founder of the magazine '5W', Agus Morales , began with the intervention of Jeroen Merk , from SOMO , the International Research Center on Multinational Corporations , who began by talking about the importance of workers , in any context and in any country, being able to organize freely to be able to "monitor their working environments and conditions."

In this sense, Merk lamented that unionism within the sector is very much a minority , since, as he explained, "millions of workers in the electronics sector are denied their right to organize and protest" and, often, this oppression goes further, since in many Asian countries, " it is the same governments that promote the organization of workers from their own structures in order to silence dissident voices in this way."

All these issues are included in the report 'No Union, No Voice' , prepared by SOMO, which studies the case of seven Asian countries and also highlights that, of the total technology industry, 78% of workers (13.5 million) are located in Asia , with China being the country with the highest concentration of workers (7.7 million). Of the total number of workers in the industry, 60% are women.

Despite this predominance of female workers in Asia, the report also highlights that the industry continues to be dominated by companies from the United States . In fact, Merk explained that "the industry is based on the Silicon Valley model because it is a territory that has a deep-rooted tradition of developing strategies that go against the organization of female workers ." In this sense, he added that this behavior is " very hypocritical , since many of these large companies have included in their internal codes the right of female workers to organize, but this does not apply to their outsourced factories."

The panel delved into the case of Indonesia, which, through the Federation of Indonesian Metalworkers' Unions (FSPMI) , has become a benchmark for the sector's union struggle . Through the testimony of union leader Boenadi Prihanani , those attending the presentation were able to identify some of the main challenges of union organization in the sector: organizing workers in smaller factories , lack of understanding between workers in different parts of the assembly line , the use of artificial intelligence , etc.

The representative of the Metalworkers Alliance of the Philippines , Mary Ann Castillo , was also scheduled to speak at the talk, but she was ultimately unable to participate because the group is currently on strike .