As I continue to read The New New Deal: How Regional Activism will Reshape the American Labor Movement. I came across an excerpt attributed to Eric Benhamou the chairman and CEO of 3Com Corporation back in 1996. What is amazing is that he acknowledges social responsibility!

We also expect the least skilled of our jobs to command decent wages, and to enable all these workers to live and function within our society. Failure to acknowledge that such a threshold exists borders on irresponsibility.

For some, it is a plain moral question of social equity. For others, it is a pragmatic need to address a business risk before it develops into a crisis. For others yet, it is a matter of dealing with guilty feeling one experiences at the thought that yesterday’s business lunch leftovers were magically cleaned up at night by someone who lives in a storage shed.

The current situation with our janitors is a symptom of a broader problem. We are pricing basic living standards beyond the reach of an untolerable high percentage of the population. This problem is of our own making. Not unlike our well-chronicled educational system debacle, it can be solved with a little money spent now, or allowed to fester over time at a much greater cost to us all. As leaders of the high-tech industry, we are being put to the test. While some may ignore a serious problem in the making for a while longer, I trust many will join me an dSan Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales and see in the janitors’ case an opportunity to make our ideas known about which kind of a Silicon Valley we stand for.