The Janitors in Silicon Valley

Abstract

The so-called new economy’s prestigious workplaces in the capital of the electronics industry, Silicon Valley, have to be cleaned too. They are cleaned at night, mainly by illegal immigrants. At Sonix, one of the biggest and most flourishing high-tech companies, management contracted several small non-unionized cleaning firms to do the cleaning. One of these firms was Bay-Clean. Most of its employees came from Mexico, worked for very low wages and had no benefits — not even health insurance.