Friday, October 22, 2004

HP, IBM, Dell set `code' for treatment of workers (MercuryNews.com)

In January, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, a non-profit organization based in the United Kingdom, issued a report stating that workers who make computer components for IBM, Dell and HP in Mexico, China and Thailand are suffering ``atrocious conditions for extremely low pay.''

Read the whole article at: MercuryNews.com | 10/21/2004 | HP, IBM, Dell set `code' for treatment of workers

Monday, October 18, 2004

Pass the Prozac

What a depressing set of readings!

1. This question is for anyone who feels qualified to answer it (really, it isn't meant to be gender-determinate). How/why is it that complete devotion to the machine and its workings is seen by these undergrad male computer science majors as normal? At what point and in what type of environment does such a life (one that I would consider grossly unbalanced) become normalized?

2. Same article as above - This study was conducted in the late 90's. Does anyone know if there has been a follow up study? I guess my question is, do we know or do we think that the changes the university instituted helped alleviate the problem?

3. Tympas is critical of Light's focus on intellectual work, but Light does mention that the women are crawling around the machine looking for things that they need to fix/adjust/etc. To me, this did seem to indicate that she acknowledged the manual labor aspect of the job. I guess my point/question is, as much as manual labor seems to be gendered masculine, there are occupations that involve physical labor that are gendered female - occupations such as nursing. Is this because of the nature of the physical labor? Does this occur when the labor seems repetitive, boring, or odious for some other reason?