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Military-industrial complex super-exploits prison labor
In reality, pushing more and more state and federal prisoners into the “labor force” is creating an internal layer of super-exploited laborers, akin to undocumented workers who labor within the United States under slave-like conditions.
News reports indicate that some materials used by the U.S. military during its May bombing campaign against Libya were made with the labor of prisoners in the United States. The parts were made in federal prison workshops run by the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s UNICOR division.
According to the government’s own website about UNICOR and Federal Prison Industries: “ Its mission is to employ and provide job skills training to the greatest practicable number of inmates confined within the Federal Bureau of Prisons; contribute to the safety and security of our Nation’s Federal correctional facilities by keeping inmates constructively occupied; produce market-priced quality goods and services for sale to the Federal Government; operate in a self-sustaining manner; and minimize FPI’s impact on private business and labor.”
A May 20 AlterNet article by Mike Elk points out the reality: “[T]raditionally, these types of defense jobs would have gone to highly paid, unionized workers. However, the prison workers building parts for these missiles earn a starting wage of 23 cents an hour and can only make a maximum of $1.15 an hour. Nearly 1 in 100 adults are in jail in the United States and are exempt from our minimum wage laws, creating a sizable captive workforce that could undercut outside wage standards.”
The December 2010 strike of Georgia prisoners in at least six prisons was sparked in part by labor issues of prisoners working as virtual slaves in prison industries.
A number of rationalizations are used to justify corporate use of prison labor. UNICOR claims that the use of such labor keeps “inmates constructively occupied.” Michael P. Jacobson, author of “Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime and End Mass Incarceration”(New York University Press, 2005) and director of the Vera Institute of Justice, advocates prison labor exploitation because “you’re providing a skill for when they leave.” (AlterNet)
Various cities and states have jumped on the prison labor bandwagon, according to The New York Times, which cites California, Florida and Georgia as states that exploit prison labor and use budget deficits to justify the practice.
In reality, pushing more and more state and federal prisoners into the “labor force” is creating an internal layer of super-exploited laborers, akin to undocumented workers who labor within the United States under slave-like conditions. The two categories of workers differ mainly in their legal status.
For bosses, exploiting undocumented workers can result in fines and the risk of their workers being deported. Hiring prison labor eliminates these problems. Virtual slavery is legal under the U.S. Constitution as long as the person enslaved is a prisoner. Since it is legal, more capitalists will be enticed to use UNICOR as a way to lower production costs and defeat trade unions while claiming to be helping prisoners.
The labor movement, the prisoner rights movement and prisoners themselves must unite to challenge this effort to super-exploit prisoners, weaken unions and drive down workers' wages.
According to the government’s own website about UNICOR and Federal Prison Industries: “ Its mission is to employ and provide job skills training to the greatest practicable number of inmates confined within the Federal Bureau of Prisons; contribute to the safety and security of our Nation’s Federal correctional facilities by keeping inmates constructively occupied; produce market-priced quality goods and services for sale to the Federal Government; operate in a self-sustaining manner; and minimize FPI’s impact on private business and labor.”
A May 20 AlterNet article by Mike Elk points out the reality: “[T]raditionally, these types of defense jobs would have gone to highly paid, unionized workers. However, the prison workers building parts for these missiles earn a starting wage of 23 cents an hour and can only make a maximum of $1.15 an hour. Nearly 1 in 100 adults are in jail in the United States and are exempt from our minimum wage laws, creating a sizable captive workforce that could undercut outside wage standards.”
The December 2010 strike of Georgia prisoners in at least six prisons was sparked in part by labor issues of prisoners working as virtual slaves in prison industries.
A number of rationalizations are used to justify corporate use of prison labor. UNICOR claims that the use of such labor keeps “inmates constructively occupied.” Michael P. Jacobson, author of “Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime and End Mass Incarceration”(New York University Press, 2005) and director of the Vera Institute of Justice, advocates prison labor exploitation because “you’re providing a skill for when they leave.” (AlterNet)
Various cities and states have jumped on the prison labor bandwagon, according to The New York Times, which cites California, Florida and Georgia as states that exploit prison labor and use budget deficits to justify the practice.
In reality, pushing more and more state and federal prisoners into the “labor force” is creating an internal layer of super-exploited laborers, akin to undocumented workers who labor within the United States under slave-like conditions. The two categories of workers differ mainly in their legal status.
For bosses, exploiting undocumented workers can result in fines and the risk of their workers being deported. Hiring prison labor eliminates these problems. Virtual slavery is legal under the U.S. Constitution as long as the person enslaved is a prisoner. Since it is legal, more capitalists will be enticed to use UNICOR as a way to lower production costs and defeat trade unions while claiming to be helping prisoners.
The labor movement, the prisoner rights movement and prisoners themselves must unite to challenge this effort to super-exploit prisoners, weaken unions and drive down workers' wages.
For more information:
http://www.pslweb.org/
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If truth be known the phrasing of Ike's called Military Industrial Complex, actually misses the point of truth, for it deliberatly leave out the third and worst complex, that is the Prison complex upon which the first two complexes could not do their dirty work without. We in the liberation movement ought therefore not to forget to include what Ike was afaid to include, but which is entirely integral to each complexes functioning. That language must function with understanding and give and accurate description of the matter-in-motion or else it is hiding and covering up a 'Big Lie' which is that the Prison system is correctional, when in truth it is a war machine of the ruling classes of elites for the elites, (in Canada and the U.S.A. the 'Supreme Courts are appointed and not elected by the people, which makes govt. for, by, and of the people unattainable in the full sense of the world.)
Such updates must not ommitt important info so the 'resistence' can fully understand what it is fully dealing with, so the oppressed classes can rid themselves of their oppressors completly and bring all the living world to a new liberated condition of life for the planet. That updated phrase ought to include denunciation of the military, industrial, prison complex, and not hide their interaction and interdependence as a war machine assaulting the livability of the entire planet.
We therefore need to Re-tool the entire industrial revolution to the renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power which transforms to electricity and is more power than can be used by society. No more blackouts. This non-pollution solution provides work for all and forever more. The military, industrial, prison complex in the Western World headed by U.S. Imperialism is an instrument of exploitation and oppression, that forces the motivation of coal, gas, oil, and atomic energy, which is killing the ecological web-of-life by pollution beyond the ability of nature to sustain itself fully with necessary re-newing ways, such as taking out the carbon and giving back clean oxygen (trees, etc).
In popular parlance, that means the organic agricultural communes instead of prisons are necessary to our continuance as a specie on the planet and without a system change we face continued worsening conditions, and inevitable deepening of the crisis of the world's economy, polity, cultural,judicial, and religo.
Extinction is not the option, so Viva socialist liberation. End pollution wars, by scrapping the war machine and its manufactury as it holds all world pollution in place. Six overkill militarily if a full exchange took place.
Liberation in fact is the scapping of the war machine and its manufactury, Canada's First Canadian Division says that.
Such updates must not ommitt important info so the 'resistence' can fully understand what it is fully dealing with, so the oppressed classes can rid themselves of their oppressors completly and bring all the living world to a new liberated condition of life for the planet. That updated phrase ought to include denunciation of the military, industrial, prison complex, and not hide their interaction and interdependence as a war machine assaulting the livability of the entire planet.
We therefore need to Re-tool the entire industrial revolution to the renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power which transforms to electricity and is more power than can be used by society. No more blackouts. This non-pollution solution provides work for all and forever more. The military, industrial, prison complex in the Western World headed by U.S. Imperialism is an instrument of exploitation and oppression, that forces the motivation of coal, gas, oil, and atomic energy, which is killing the ecological web-of-life by pollution beyond the ability of nature to sustain itself fully with necessary re-newing ways, such as taking out the carbon and giving back clean oxygen (trees, etc).
In popular parlance, that means the organic agricultural communes instead of prisons are necessary to our continuance as a specie on the planet and without a system change we face continued worsening conditions, and inevitable deepening of the crisis of the world's economy, polity, cultural,judicial, and religo.
Extinction is not the option, so Viva socialist liberation. End pollution wars, by scrapping the war machine and its manufactury as it holds all world pollution in place. Six overkill militarily if a full exchange took place.
Liberation in fact is the scapping of the war machine and its manufactury, Canada's First Canadian Division says that.
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