Labor Control and Resistance of Mexican Immigrant Janitors in Silicon Valley

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the forces of national and global restructuring have led to the proliferation of labor subcontracting arrangements in the United States that use immigrant workers to increase labor flexibility and reduce labor costs, particularly in the service sector. A case in point is the building-cleaning industry in Silicon Valley in northern California, which relies on Mexican and other Latino immigrants to clean the offices of major high-tech corporations. In turn, the subcontracting of immigrant workers for low-skilled occupations has opened new opportunities and challenges for management and organized labor. Based on a case study of one of the largest electronics companies in Silicon Valley, this article examines the varied forms of managerial control employed with immigrant workers to increase flexibility in the workplace and the ways janitors resist them. Rather than taking immigrants' labor flexibility for granted, I argue that we need to examine it as a fluid process that is continuously constructed, negotiated, and contested in the workplace.

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