One would think that as high-tech companies excised workers from the economy, they would at least treat those they continue to employ with some consideration. But Silicon Valley’s famous table tennis and smoothies perks don’t extend to the blue-collar jobs in the region. Reports have detailed how Tesla workers have faced safety risks (including injuries that the company didn’t properly report), excessive hours (Red Bulls were reportedly handed out to workers to keep them on their feet) and filthy conditions (some workers allegedly had to move through a raw sewage spill to keep the assembly lines going). The United Auto Workers has accused Tesla of union-busting tactics, and in March the National Labor Relations Board filed a second complaint against the company.

Such erosion of labor standards and job displacement is a concern across all of America’s industries, of course. But high-tech companies are making the displacement of humans a central mission and executing it with stunning efficiency. “Silicon Valley could be a big contributor to a manufacturing rebirth in the U.S.,” says Chuck Darrah, an anthropology professor at San Jose State University in the heart of valley who studies the region’s high-tech industry. “But so much of it now is about automation, and the price of robots in the U.S. is pretty much the same as in China and Mexico.”

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