By Andy Schwiebert, Director of the Interfaith Council at Working Partnerships USA

In early October, hundreds of community members and religious leaders gathered in downtown San Jose to demand that Adobe Systems and other high-tech companies treat contracted service workers with dignity and ensure that their voice on the job is respected.  These religious leaders are partnering with the Service Workers Rising campaign, which seeks to organize thousands of workers in the food service, security, and janitorial industries across the country.

In Santa Clara County, these workers service the corporate campuses of many of the most successful high-tech and biotech companies in the area, including Adobe, Applied Materials, Genentech, Electronic Arts, Sun, and Broadcom.  The Peninsula and the South Bay are major centers of technological innovation. 

While the tech bust and recession hit the Bay Area harder than other parts of the country, the economy has been on the rebound since 2003. The Peninsula and the South Bay are major centers of technological innovation.  However, the benefits of that economic upturn have been enjoyed by few.

According to both Science and Fortune magazines, Genentech ranks as one of the best possible places to work, as they offer perks and benefits unimaginable to most Americans.  What Fortune and Science magazines does not make known is Genentech’ inability to improve the plight of its food service workers.  Genentech’s food service workers are contracted out by a company called Guckenheimer Enterprises.

Guckenheimer is one of the largest food service contractor companies in the High Tech/Biotech Corridor that runs from San Jose up to the Peninsula to South San Francisco.  It serves more than 120 companies in Northern California. Guckenheimer often fails to provide wages that working families can live on and does not provide health insurance that is affordable.Many Guckenheimer workers have relied on government funded health insurance or go uninsured. Others who opt for the company’s insurance program face the choice between paying the $120 premium each month and putting food on the table for their families. Service workers live paycheck to paycheck in a region that is increasingly unaffordable for working families.

Religious leaders and other community allies are standing with contracted service workers seeking an end to their situation of working poverty. The involvement of Silicon Valley’s faith leaders provides a unique contribution to the Service Workers Rising campaign, both locally and regionally:

• Faith leaders formed a working group to strategize ways to engage high tech industry leaders on their moral responsibility to the contracted service workers.
• The working group is promoting a Code of Conduct for Socially Responsible Contractors in faith communities across Silicon Valley and in the public realm. Among other demands, this Code of Conduct asks that contracted service workers
  • be paid a living wage,
  • are provided with affordable health insurance,
  • and that their right to a voice in the work place be respected.
• In August, dozens of religious leaders from across the San Jose and South Bay region visited Applied Materials and Genentech campuses to press for the adoption of the Code of Conduct.
• Over Labor Day weekend, roughly 60,000 people in 55 congregations heard stories from service workers and of need for the Code of Conduct.
• Additionally, over 8,000 cards of support for the Code of Conduct were signed and collected in South Bay congregations.
• Since then, several new faith leaders have stepped up to be involved with the working group and other efforts led by the Interfaith Council.

The involvement of faith leaders not only contributes to the success of this particular union organizing effort, but has built broader awareness in the community of the issues faced by working families.  That awareness will also be valuable for future campaigns to organize workers in other industries.