As the high tech industry becomes an ever larger component of the global and the U.S. economy, workers in that industry become an ever larger component of the global and national working class. As yet, the labor movement in the U.S. has made few inroads into this segment of labor. The reasons for this failure-and the hope of overcoming it-all have to do with issues that our Party is uniquely positioned to address from both theoretical understanding and practical experience.

The high-tech workforce is divided into two principal sectors: the engineers and software developers who design the hardware and software for computers and related technology on the one hand and the production workers who produce and assemble the components on which the software runs. The former sector is highly trained and relatively well paid; the latter requires considerably less training and, in the U.S., has been comprised largely of immigrants, mostly women, and their pay scale is, unsurprisingly, far lower than that of the engineers and software developers.

Equally unsurprising is the fact that over the past three decades the greater portion of production work in the high-tech sector has been moved overseas to cheaper labor markets. Even over a ten-year period, from 2002 to 2012 (the earliest and latest dates for which comparable figures are available), the number of production workers involved in computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing has dropped from 55,110 to 16,920, according to Department of Labor statistics; the number of workers listed in the closely related occupation of "semiconductor processors" fell in the same period from 43,360 to 21,380; the figure for 1997 was 64,650.

By contrast, the ranks of software developers, whether of applications or systems software, have grown from 611,800 in 2002 to 978,040 in 2012. The demand for this upper level of high-tech workers continues to thrive.

Further proof of this differential in demand for production versus software development workers is the growth in the disparity (already large) between the pay of these two groups. Between 2002 and 2012, the mean hourly pay of production workers in the computer industry went from $12.49 to $14.31, while that of software developers went from $35.97 to $47.08. Adjusted for inflation over that same period, these figures show that production workers suffered a drop in real wages of 15%, while software engineers enjoyed a gain in real wages of 28%.

The wide disparity between the shrinking production sector and the growing engineering sector of workers in the computer industry obviously impacts the prospects of organizing either group. In fact, the relative privileging of high tech engineers has already led to a series of protests by low-income residents of San Francisco against the corporate buses transporting workers of Google and other tech giants to their jobs. The protesters blame the "techies" for skyrocketing rents as these relatively well-paid workers move into traditionally affordable neighborhoods. These charges reflect an economic reality, but it should be clear that the appropriate targets are the real estate interests seeking maximum profits off the influx of a new group of tenants. There is an urgent need to promote an understanding of the common working-class interests of the various sectors and strata of the worker class and of the need for unity against their common corporate exploiters and enemies. Obviously, our Party's understanding of the need for working-class unity is right on the money in this situation.

The first efforts at organizing workers in the computer industry were made in the 1980s and targeted the then relatively large pool of production workers. San Francisco State University sociologist Karen Hossfeld has published a study of these efforts, "Why Aren't High-Tech Workers Organized? Lessons in Gender, Race, and Nationality from Silicon Valley," found in the collection Working People of California (ed. Daniel Cornford, University of California Press, 1995) and based on research between 1982 and 1993. (The article is available online at http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft9x0nb6fg&chunk.id=d0e13046&toc.id=d0e13046&brand=ucpress,) The workforce involved at that time consisted mostly of Filipino and Vietnamese immigrant women. The unions attempting to organize in Silicon Valley included the Glaziers (Glaziers, Architectural Metal and Glassworkers Union), UE (United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers), and the Machinists (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Worker). The CWA (Communications Workers of America) tried to organize in the Route 128 corridor of Massachusetts, another center of the high-tech industry.

None of these efforts succeeded. Hossfeld attributes this failure in part to the relatively small resources that the unions granted these campaigns and to the very real threat (since then largely realized) of relocation, but above all to a lack of sensitivity to issues of race, nationality, and gender:

It has been extremely difficult for unions to attempt to organize a labor force that is not only severely divided by language, race, and nationality but also often spatially and geographically spread out between multiple plants within one firm. Atari, for example, had several plants in Sunnyvale, Milpitas, and San Jose at the time of the Glaziers' organizing drive. Organizers point to these as key problems, along with the very real threats of plant relocation and automation.

A query to the South Bay Labor Council has not turned up any later serious efforts at organizing the dwindling computer production workforce in Silicon Valley, though there may have been efforts there or elsewhere that I am not aware of. There remains, however, a substantial population of low-wage immigrant workers in the area (and of course elsewhere in the U.S.) whose jobs in one way or another serve the high-tech industry and its employees. I will deal with some of the efforts at organizing this workforce below.

The other major sector of the high-tech industry workforce, the software engineers, poses major challenges to organization. From anecdotal evidence and personal conversation with people involved in the industry, the highly trained workers in the software industry are generally resistant to unionization. Though from a Marxist standpoint they are clearly members of the working class generating enormous profits for CEOs and shareholders, they are said generally to see themselves as "professionals" rather than workers. Many hope and indeed plan to become entrepreneurs themselves and thus see their interests as aligned with those of the venture capitalists who fund such efforts.

This is not to say that workers in the software sector have no grievances that unions could address. Job security is a paramount issue for these workers, given not only the volatility of startups but also the sometimes dramatic fluctuations in the fortunes and the workforce needs even of large tech corporations. Another, not unrelated, issue for American-born software workers is competition from foreign workers brought into the US under H1-B and L-1 visas. This latter issue calls for considerable thought from progressives, who must work against setting workers against one another on the basis of nationality. Here again, the Party's understanding of "proletarian internationalism"-whatever we may choose to call it-is crucial.

There have been some union inroads into this sector. Most notable among these at the present time is probably the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, CWA Local 37083. Despite its name, this organization, focusing on temp workers and freelancers in the high-tech industry (including but not limited to software engineers), has members nationwide. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka's remarks on this effort in a 2009 speech are worth quoting at length:

When we talk about the problems facing contingent workers they really listen: and for good reason - after all, a man or woman working as a temp or a freelancer today may as well be walking a tightrope without a net. They know workers with unions make more money and have better benefits; they just don't think unions fit the way they work. And you can't blame them because we haven't really focused on the way they work.

Well, we can't ask them to change the way they earn their living to meet our model for unionism; we have to change our approach to unionism to meet their needs.

One union that's pioneering in this is the Communications Workers. They have an affiliate called WashTech. It began as a grassroots movement of temps working at Microsoft in Seattle. Now, thanks to the Internet, it has members from Boston to Silicon Valley and it's evolving into a dynamic, new union of tech workers dealing with problems ranging from job security and health care, to offshore outsourcing and visas.

This call to match the form of unionism to the new conditions of work aligns with elements of our own Scott Marshall's call for "big picture trade unionism." In the changing conditions of the global marketplace and the internationalization of production and corporate power, the labor movement in all sectors requires new models of organization. The AFL-CIO has taken note of this, and such efforts as Working America and the campaigns around WalMart and the fast food industry are promising starts in a process of exploration and transformation that our Party has advocated for some years.

Washtech was founded in 1998 by Microsoft contract employees and has so far organized and won collective bargaining rights at four companies. Currently, its primary focus is combating offshoring of technology jobs. The Seattle Times has named Washtech "the technology union leading the national fight against offshoring." At the Federal level, it is doing the following:

--fighting for reforms in the H-1B and L-1 visa issues;

--demanding that Trade Act Adjustment Assistance be extended to service sector employees; and

--working to get legislation introduced that would demand transparency from corporations that are exporting jobs by providing workers with notification of the shift.

Washtech successfully lobbied Congress to ask the GAO to study the trend of offshore outsourcing and its impact on the high-tech economy. (The GAO issued a report on offshoring in 2006, Offshoring: U.S. Semiconductor and Software Industries Increasingly Produce in China and India, which is available at http://www.gao.gov/assets/260/251352.pdf.)

On the state level, Washtech has succeeded in getting one of its members elected to the Washington state legislature and helped to introduce legislation opposing offshoring in more than 30 states, ranging from Customer Right to Know to limiting state public contracts for information services going overseas.

The CWA has also organized IBM employees, from service workers to engineers, into Alliance@IBM, CWA local 1701. While this organization has not yet won bargaining rights with the tech giant, it is active on a number of issues, including combating the massive layoffs IBM is planning and implementing. As in other areas of the tech world, IBM workers face outsourcing and offshoring.

These issues, and the massive importation of trained technology workers, especially from South Asia, on H-1B and L-1 visas to perform at lower pay the functions formerly performed by U.S. workers, loom large for all technology workers. The Washtech website features harrowing stories of highly educated and skilled workers driven into homelessness when they were replaced by imported labor at wages far below what native workers could live on.

The union to which I belong, the National Writers Union, provides one model of unionism that may be viable for many tech workers. This union, organized as Local 1981 of the United Auto Workers (UAW), is specifically for freelance writers. It therefore does not organize for representation at specific workplaces but serves as a collective voice for freelancers fighting to advance their interests in the face of corporate power. Most notable among its successes are some significant victories in establishing writers' rights to compensation for work that appears in electronic form. The union also maintains a division to aid writers on contracts and grievances with publishers, both print and electronic. A similar structure might reach many mobile members of the high-tech engineering workforce.

As noted above, there seems to be little union activity at present among the dwindling number of production workers in the high tech industry. There are, however, organizing drives and other forms of struggle among some of the service workers at high-tech corporations. For instance, the SEIU is organizing security workers on the Google campus. (http://www.standforsecurity.org/). Apple Store employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against the tech giant's bag search policy, demanding payment for the time required for searches of personal belongings at the end of their work hours. There are undoubtedly other struggles going on among workers in the industry that I have not yet had the time to ferret out.

The issues involved in organizing workers in and around the growing technology sector of the economy are clearly many and complex. Here I point out four areas confronting the labor movement in this and other sectors of the working class, issues on which Communists and other progressives have both theoretical insight and practical experience to contribute to the labor movement as a whole.

1. The need for sensitivity to the issues of race, nationality, and gender among workers. The trade union movement today is undoubtedly far more aware of these issues than it was when efforts to organize high-tech production workers were made in the 1980s and early 1990s. Nonetheless, the very varied workforce at all levels of the technology industry calls for continued vigilance and struggle on these issues.

2. The need for international solidarity among workers at all levels. High-tech is an international industry. US-based companies cut labor costs both by offshoring and by importing highly trained foreign workers under H-1B and L-1 visas, whose number they wish to expand under the demonstrably false pretext that there are not sufficient American workers with the requisite qualifications available. The US labor movement, while seeking to protect the jobs (and job prospects) of American workers, must also strive for labor unity across national boundaries. There is obvious urgency to building an international struggle to defend technology workers of all nationalities.

3. The need for new forms of unionism that fit the new work conditions, especially of software engineers, in the high-tech industry. There is a need here for more than traditional workplace organizing. The labor movement must demonstrate that it can promote the interests of a highly mobile workforce, including freelancers.

4. The need to build working-class unity, as shown by the conflicts already breaking out between strata of the class in the San Francisco Bay area noted above. Our Party must find ways to spread our Marxist understanding of the common interests of all workers, including those of the better paid strata of the class, over against the capitalist class that lives parasitically off their labor.

Given the growing importance of the high-tech industry nationally and globally, our upcoming Party Convention should devote some attention to helping the labor movement make inroads into this neglected key sector of the working class.

This article is an expanded version of a piece posted on the CPUSA website as part of pre-Convention discussion.

Photo:  production line workers in Thailand    Wikipedia/CC