Silicon City

by Cary McClelland

  Then I learned that if you add a little bit of color to certain things, you can make a Pikachu. The full-blown face of Pikachu in the coffee, yellow with the rosy cheeks. I made one for a customer, and she was super amazed, like, “I don’t want to drink it, I don’t want to ruin it!” Apparently, she drank it with a straw, so that the Pikachu would go straight down to the bottom. I made a coffee that says “Intel” on it. There’s a picture of it hung on their fifth floor.

  Customers would say, “I’m having a crappy day. I can’t get this program to work.” And I’d make the bear really quickly, hand it over, and see this big-ass smile.

  And I enjoyed it. It was something new, something that I’ve never done before. But, you know, there were issues working there also.

  At Intel, they have this system where you’re either a blue badge or a green badge. Blue badge, you’re an engineer, you’re a top admin. If you’re a green badge, you’re a subcontractor. Which means you’re at the bottom. I was a green badge.

  There’s special events, like the end of the summer, outside with a carnival. If you were a green badge, you were not allowed to go to the picnic, not allowed outside. Since we made the food, we got to eat it anyways—as lunch. But we weren’t allowed to go outside and play the games. You could only look. You couldn’t touch.

  They had it very separated—by class—as I liked to say, segregated.

  Honestly, making those weird little coffees—that was a chance to do something different. Other than that, you were invisible. You were an invisible worker. Things got restocked magically.

  There was this weird circle thing in the middle of the cafeteria that had the teas, the sugars, the lids, the coffee pots, the milk jugs, the soda machines, and the cups. Even in the middle of service, you had to go in between people to restock things. You couldn’t get in. People would ignore you, reach across you, not say “Excuse me,” not say anything. They just reached over you like you’re invisible. They’d spill things and leave it. Or they’d say, “I dropped something,” point, and walk away.

  You’re not allowed to say anything. You’re not allowed to say, “Well, here’s a towel. I don’t have time because the coffee machine is overrunning.” Nope. You had to clean it up.

  Some people are just assholes. Excuse my language, but I mean people are. They see things, and they’re just like, Eh. That’s not my job. People have said to my face, “That’s your job. Otherwise, why do we pay you?”

  They were engineers and admin. We were below them. We were the help. You can’t say anything, and you can’t defend yourself.

  There were problems with management too. One manager just didn’t like me. Everything I did was just wrong. She would get upset if I left something empty overnight after closing. She would take the person that would help me off my shift, so I’d be closing alone.

  Then, there are certain issues that happen in any workforce. I don’t want to say that a majority of them fall on mujeres, or women, but unfortunately, there’s certain things that are said that can make you feel uncomfortable. A lot of people don’t understand, that is a form of sexual harassment. They are just like, “Oh. Well, it is normal.” Or, “It is natural.”

  I had a certain manager. He started out with jokes. Suggesting certain things or making comments that were double meanings. I would ask for a certain amount of coffee—because I worked at the espresso bar—and he would say, “Are beans the only thing you need?”

  And I would just look at him. Maybe I heard him wrong. Maybe I took it wrong. So I’d make it clear, “Just the coffee beans. Five bags.”

  And he’d say, “Oh, I bet you need those. If you need anything else, just let me know. . . .” I didn’t really know what to do or say, because it was my manager.

  He would come to talk to me—it was just the two of us. He said, “Show me how you make this coffee.” And when you have to show someone how to steam the milk, they have to be able to see it—it’s a little too close for comfort. From then on, my coworker would make sure that he stood by my side, just so I wasn’t alone.

  Eventually, I told the manager that he made me feel uncomfortable. Of course he acted like, “I don’t understand why you feel uncomfortable.” Making me feel like it was all in my head, like none of that was true, or none of what I was feeling was relevant. And he would still keep saying things. . . .

  So I was on the verge of quitting. I was getting panic attacks every day. My friend, he was a dishwasher. I told him, “I’m done with this place. I can’t take this.” I don’t know how he understood me because I was crying, gasping for air, in the middle of a panic attack.

  And he said, “Calm down. It’s gonna be okay.” He made me meet him the next day. And that’s where they told me they were organizing underground.

  I had never heard of a union before. I thought it was just for painters, construction workers, that kind of thing.

  Then he started explaining what that meant: giving power to the workers, being able to stand up for yourself, without the fear of being fired, the fact that you have someone behind you. Not being scared. To me, that felt amazing—where I can actually be like, “You can’t keep treating me like this!”

  So I said, “I’m in. What can I do to help?”

  He said, “Do you have questions? Concerns? Comments?”

  And I said, “Nope. What can I do?”

  I signed up to support the committee. I could reach people they couldn’t, so soon I had my own little group that I could move. The more and more I heard, the more it fanned this fire that was already lit.

  I had seen other people that were getting treated badly. But I learned so many people were getting discriminated against. Older-age workers written up for stupid reasons. There was only one person who was African American, he always got double the workload. You couldn’t prove it, but you could see it.

  People had been working there for, like, fifteen years and hadn’t gotten a raise, a review even. The lucky ones might get a five-cent raise, fifteen, twenty-five cents. It’s money, but when you have a family of four or a family of three, heck, even one kid or just a wife. . . . We’re talking about a billion-dollar corporation that can’t afford to help out.

  These people never complained. If they got fired, what are they gonna do? They have a family to feed. The worst thing was that after Intel, most folks would get off of work to go to another job, where maybe they’d get treated the same way.

  I remember being at a meeting where they proposed doing a civil disobedience. One coworker wanted to do it, but she was in the middle of a custody battle with her ex-husband. Another coworker couldn’t because of her papers and all that. And I said, “I’ll do it. I don’t have anything. I can get arrested for you.” My friend Monica joined—we were the younger ones—“We’re in.”

  I told my sisters, “I’m gonna get arrested in front of Intel.” It turned into this huge thing. But eventually, my sister came around like, “It’s funny to see you walk these steps, fighting for people’s rights. Mom did the same thing.” My mom was a housekeeper, but I’m learning she was also a big part of the community. She was this huge activist. She would go to rallies in front of City Hall. And she would call her friends and make sure people went because she saw how important it was.

  Me and my mom used to butt heads a lot. The more you butt heads with your parent, the more you realize that you’re just like them. When I was a kid and I got in trouble, she would say, “Did you start the fight?”

  I said, “No.”

  She’d ask, “Did you finish the fight?” That was always her question. Did you defend yourself? She stood up for herself. She stood up for the people and the things that she believed in.

  So we have this march in front of Intel. We take over the street. Ten coworkers, some janitors, some students, people from various organizations, a priest from a local church. The ones who planned to get arrested, we kneeled on the ground. Everyone else went onto the sidewalk. And we didn’t move.

  I got handcu
ffed. We got escorted onto the parking lot and got tickets for civil disobedience. Which was surprisingly fun! We were wearing these signs around our necks, and mine was flying around as we were getting handcuffed. It flapped up and hit me in the face, and I thought, Hopefully there’s no pictures of me like this. . . .

  Soon after, Intel offered us free health insurance. And a 20 percent raise. That was amazing—to win. After that, we decided to file for an election: all the workers at Intel who were eligible to join had to vote whether or not they wanted a union.

  We went up as a committee—we rented a van, picked everyone up—to be present for when they actually opened the mail and got a count of the ballots.

  It was very tense in that room. There were some nos that came out, a bunch in a row. Then two yeses and then another no. All of us were holding our breath. Just kind of like, Oh my goodness. I can’t believe this. We are gonna lose! How did we go wrong? Did we do everything right? Then, at the end, all the yeses started coming in a bunch.

  We looked at each other, we didn’t want to get our hopes up. Some of us were trying to keep count. Some of us were like, “I’m not sure, I think I miscounted. Did we get enough yeses?” And as soon as we heard the final count, these big smiles came over our faces.

  We started crying, thinking about everything that we had been through, everything that we had to endure. All that hard work, all the frustrations, all of the heartache, to see it actually come through in the end. We won.

  We all started chanting, “Sí, se puede!” Or, “Sí, se pudo!” Which means, “Yes, we could!” The Labor Board’s offices, they are library quiet, and here you have a bunch of workers with organizers just crying, and laughing, and chanting. Eventually they told us, “You all need to leave because you guys are too loud! Take it outside! Take it outside!”

  The Unite Here Local 19. That is the union we won. It gives us a little more strength to be able to come out and defend ourselves. To say, “This is what is happening, and I need help.”

  We won quite a few things in our negotiation contract. We are getting a fifty-cent-an-hour raise every year. There is no one that makes less than $15 an hour there. We also won free health insurance for individuals—the union’s health insurance, which is amazing. For families, they are only paying, I want to say, $80 a month, which is incredible compared to before. We are the first cafeteria workers ever to have won sabbatical in our contract. And on top of that, we have our three weeks’ paid vacation. So in total, we can take up to six weeks off, paid.

  I am now working full-time for the union, helping organize all these new places. I helped a little bit with the cafeterias at Cisco. I helped out with the Facebook campaign—546 workers. They just won a union and are in the middle of the negotiations.

  We are seeing more and more support build in the tech community. The Intel fight had such a huge impact: we were so loud and public about what was going on that people were finally able to hear us. It struck people: gave them a sense of what was happening behind the scenes, made them see what wasn’t so visible. It has been amazing to meet some of them, to share my story, and to see tech workers connecting with us.

  The other day at Facebook, we needed some show of strength and power to help move the company, because it was kind of at a standstill. So, we decided to have the tech workers come in and stand in the background, just to show the company, Hey, we support these cafeteria workers too. We stand with them. And we want to see them get better benefits.

  My optimistic self is hoping and praying that there is gonna be a lot more of us fighting that fight—more people who can find their voices and be able to say, “I want a union.” Or “I want to help these workers.” People who felt like I felt when I started, who didn’t have a voice, who were getting panic attacks, who felt lost in life—they will say, “I found my strength.” Because there is always going to be some kind of campaign, some kind of organizing, some kind of fight.

  It’s hard for me to wrap my head around everything that has changed. I started out working three jobs, the quiet, mousy person that let management step on me, make me cry, and give me panic attacks every single day. Now I’m this person who is going around and helping other people realize that they have that power inside of them, where they don’t have to be so scared, they can defend themselves. It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that I set out this goal, and now I am an organizer!

  And I am going back to finish my high school diploma. I literally have this semester, and I’m done. I’m excited. They have this little ceremony. I get to walk the stage if I want to.

  It’s a personal goal, and it’s a family goal. Well, not a family goal—they would like me to finish, but no one was forcing me to go back. I finally felt, It’s time.

  My mom always was very upset that I didn’t finish school. So I want to be able to feel like, I finished, Mom. I know her response would be, “It’s about damn time.” But she would have said it with a big-ass smile on her face.

  ANDREW FREMIER

  As a kid, he was always drawn to San Francisco—driving up from Carmel to see punk-rock bands in the early ’80s. He remembers the old billboards and how they’d light up at night: “the Sherwin-Williams paintball, the Coppertone girl with the suntan, the only one left is the Coca-Cola one, right?” When he graduated college, he got a job with the California Department of Transportation, doing minor repairs on the bridges in the Bay Area. It turned into a calling.

  My connection to the Bay Bridge starts in 1987. I was fortunate enough to work in what they call the Toll Bridge Construction Unit. We did minor repairs on the toll bridges because, at that time, there was no real plan. I had an opportunity to repair the Bay Bridge the first time in 1989.

  I lived in the Mission. It was the World Series. I left work as quickly as I could, got to my house, turned on the TV, started watching the game, and experienced the earthquake firsthand. It was Loma Prieta.§

  So I got in my car and drove to work.

  The bridge was closed, and the cops were directing traffic off the bridge. I helped, and when the bridge cleared I got up and started working on repairs.

  I worked about thirty or forty days straight after that. Nearly every span of the east end of the bridge had slipped from their seats and had to be jacked back into place. And there was substantial damage in the vicinity. Approaching the bridge, it was like a bunch of land mines had destroyed all the pavement in both directions, the soil just liquefied.

  It’s some of the best time in history, I think, when mankind is responding to an emergency. You get a lot of people working together instead of working against.

  The Bay Bridge is what they call a lifeline bridge. It is supposed to be open twenty-four hours after an earthquake, at least for emergency vehicles. So it represents so much in the transportation and growth of the Bay. It knits the Bay.

  Before there was a bridge, in the ’20s, there was a ferry system. The railroad ended in the East Bay, and people took ferries to get to San Francisco. The Bay Bridge first provided train service from the East Bay to the Trans Bay Terminal. Then, the interstate highway system started there: Eisenhower came out and proclaimed that we would connect the country from shore to shore. The bridge is part of that history. It’s just always been that starting point for how you get to San Francisco.

  But the old Bay Bridge sat on bay mud. It wasn’t anchored into bay rock, except in a couple locations. The support system was Douglas fir timber from a hundred years or so ago. There was no real good connection between the timber supports and the concrete foundation. And it would have been very hard to make that connection sound. The steel that was used in the ’30s is good steel, but they didn’t understand the properties as well as we do today. So right, wrong, or indifferent, the decision back in the early ’90s was to replace the old Bay Bridge with a new one.

  It is a beautiful structure. Not just utilitarian, but iconic. It is amazing to see where you notice it. You can be driving on the Golden Gate Bridge and look to the
left, and there it is. You can be at Pier 39, and the tower pops out over some of the wharfs out there. Take the ferry to Larkspur, and it comes out at some angles, pops out of the fog at night or glows gold in the morning. All the different times and weather conditions, subtle differences all day long.

  It’s beautiful. How many different perspectives there are and how things fit together. If you look down from the Berkeley Hills, you see this necklace of suspension bridges. With the Richmond Bridge and East Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate all off in that horizon. If you sit on the foot of one of those bridges, you get a very different perspective—how massive they are. From the bay, you can see the infrastructure in the water that you’re not aware of when you’re on top in a car.

  The bay’s given us these big, impressive, manmade engineering marvels that are so fantastic, from the bottom of the water to the top of the tower. I don’t know, maybe that’s my perspective because I’ve had the opportunity to climb them all and walk on them all and keep care of them all. I just find myself very attached to them and what they represent.

  It’s important for Bay Area residents to think about the nine counties as being all part of the same system.

  For instance, every day I drive from Marin to Alameda County, across the Richmond Bridge through Contra Costa. So I drive through three counties every day. I spend a lot of time in the city of San Francisco. And I’ve got family on the peninsula and friends in Walnut Creek and in-laws that live in Santa Cruz.

  My existence is probably representative of many folks in the Bay Area. Even if I don’t live in many counties, I interact and take advantage of the benefits of all the others—and live with the problems of all of them also. So to me, it’s obvious, as a Bay Area citizen, you can’t focus all your energy on your own county and successfully navigate the adventures that the bay gives us.

  But when we look at all the nine counties, they are all different. They have different opinions about economic change, about what land use means, in terms of the kinds of transportation systems that they have available to them and want to improve. About water. About taxation. About schools.