The electronics industry

Abstract

The electronics industry employs millions of workers throughout the world. Many multinational electronics industries locate their labor-intensive operations in developing countries. This has been attributed to the comparatively low cost of labor and attractive financial and tax incentives offered in these countries to the leading multinational companies. In many of these developing countries, the industry is a major contributor to employment and national economic growth. The industry itself is diverse. Its main sectors are semiconductor wafer fabrication, manufacture of printed circuit boards, the assembly of semiconductor devices and printed circuit boards, and construction of the final electronic products. The major processes in the electronics industry can be classified into two broad categories - fabrication and assembly. Table 1 summarizes these processes. It is recognized that work in these processes results in exposure to dermatological hazards (Koh 1997). © 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.