Monday, April 30, 2001		Article

Malaysia’s technology workers nervous
By Patrick Chalmers

ELECTRONICS industry workers in Malaysia’s Penang state are watching their backs but so far the tropical technology hub has escaped the worst of a global round of hi-tech sackings.

Nooraini Nor, a 33-year-old mother of three, still has her warehouse job with a leading Japanese electronics firm though she worries what might happen when her contract expires.

"We used to be permanent, now it’s contracts. I have a contract for three months," she said at the road-side noodle bar run by her husband.

"If they don’t want you to continue, they don’t renew."

Cattle egrets fly overhead after a day spent in nearby paddy fields, where Nooraini’s mother-in-law has worked all her life.

Her Malay family has prospered since Penang bet on the nascent electronics business three decades ago, when high unemployment and declining industries like tin smelting left the state government seeking labour-intensive alternatives.

The then chief minister Lim Chong Eu chose electronics over activities like wig-making, turning Penang island and the stretch of mainland which make up the state into a magnet for foreign investment, worth 3.3 billion ringgit ($900 million) in 2000 alone.

The state’s manufacturing sector employed nearly 195,000 people as of December last year, 1,18,000 of whom worked for electronics industry blue bloods from Japan, the USA, Taiwan, Singapore and elsewhere.

While Penang has earned the inevitable "Silicon Island" title, the northwestern peninsular Malaysian state never saw the pay and stock option explosion of the US West Coast original.

Penang Development Commission data shows most unskilled electrical and electronics workers start on under 17.5 ringgit ($4.6) a day and engineers on 1,500 to 2,500 ringgit a month. The central bank forecast electronics output growth dropping below 10 per cent this year versus 2000’s red-hot 44.8 per cent.

Major job cuts to date in Penang have been limited to disk drive giant Seagate Technology Inc, which is shedding 4,000 staff in an efficiency push that closed its drives-assembly plant.

Chipmaker Intel Corp has cut discretionary spending and overtime at its assembly and test facilities while Dell Computer Corp — whose Penang plant supplies Asia-Pacific markets with personal computers, laptops, servers and the like — still plans to expand.