![]() He formed a small (~10 member) online group called Former And Current Employees of Intel (FACE-Intel) to coordinate six mass emails over 21 months to Intel employees about company wrongdoing. An earlier physical letter, sent directly to the President, received 40 signatures from cryptography and computing experts.įormer Intel engineer Kourosh Kenneth ("Ken") Hamidi alleged wrongful termination and discrimination after his claims for workers' compensation, following a car accident, were denied and he was fired in 1995. The petition obtains over 50,000 signatures. The group expresses concern about the possibility of surveillance through decryption keys held by government agencies. Most of the strikers were Latina women and had contacted the United Electrical Workers Union - they struck after the company fired a worker who was vocal in supporting unionization.Ĭomputer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) launches an online petition in opposition to the Clipper Chip, a cryptographic device intended to provide a standard for securing private voice communication. Workers at Versatronex Corporation, a company in Silicon Valley that makes circuit boards, went on strike to protest low wages and a lack of health care and other benefits. Such a system would be prone to major errors, they argued, and would be irresponsible to implement. Reagan's Star Wars system is not feasible given current technology. military of over 10,000 possible errors in the Star Wars system.Ī group of computer professionals, led by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), signs a petition arguing that Pres. The company officially divested from South Africa in 1987.įourteen employees at AT&T sign a letter warning the U.S. The company created the computer system that upheld the country's passbook system. IBM workers formed an organization, IBM: Speak Up!, to protest the company's involvement with apartheid South Africa. ![]() The ultimately gained enough votes to continue forward with an NLRB election before losing momentum due to anti-unionizing efforts from company management. Workers at Silicon Valley conglomerate Smith-Corona-Marchant (S.C.M.) held a unionizing drive and a hearing with the National Labor Relations Board. While the plans were not realized, it is one of the first known attempts at unionizing in the computer technology industry. The Committee to Plan a Computer Union meets to plan an "industry-wide, all-inclusive union which would span the gap between professionals (programmers/ analysts/operators) and non-professionals (key-punch operators/tape-handlers)". The company responded by the surveilling and threatening the workers, first denying and then continuing their operations, and starting a public relations campaign to improve their image. The two employees discovered that Polaroid was selling equipment to the South African government that allowed for a racist system of surveillance known as passbooks. The organization was founded by two of the company's Black employees, Caroline Hunter (a chemist) and Ken Williams (a photographer). Polaroid workers affiliated with the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM) rallied at an anti-apartheid protest in Technology Square in Cambridge, MA and organized what is believed to be the first anti-apartheid boycott of a U.S. They collected data on internal pay guidelines salaries at IBM to increase their leverage with management and supported fellow employees who faced retaliation after speaking out. The organization was one of the first to speak out against the company's involvement in South Africa and to demand equal pay and better opportunities for promotion for Black employees. The group also attended an event at NYU to support work and research stoppages in universities.īlack IBM employees founded the National Black Workers Alliance of IBM (BWA),"the first-ever movement of hi-tech minority workers". They raised funds to pay for the bail of a fellow programmer, Clark Squire, who was arrested for his activity with the Black Panthers. The group pressured the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to adopt an anti-war position and NYC members collected 320 signatures on petitions against the military's use of technology. Computer People for Peace (established as Computer People for Peace - name changed in 1970) formed in 1968/1969 in protest of the Vietnam War.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |