Race and class divide: Black and Hispanic service workers are tech's growing underclass

A new and growing underclass is working inside some of the world's wealthiest companies. They push mops and clean toilets. They cook and serve gourmet lunches. They patrol suburban office parks. They ferry technology workers to and from their jobs in luxury shuttle buses. But they are not on the payroll at Apple, Facebook or Google, companies famous for showering their workers with six-figure salaries, stock options and perks. Instead they are employed by outside contractors. And they say the bounty from the technology boom is not trickling down to them. 

Nowhere is that trend more pronounced than in Silicon Valley where the economic divide is widening between highly educated and skilled high-tech workers and low-paid workers who are trying to piece together a living in one of the country's most expensive places. A much higher percentage of these low-paid workers are Black or Hispanic, making them stand out on high-tech campuses where those historically underrepresented groups account for a tiny fraction of the professional workforce.