"Posting Links" is one of the best tools that social activism has, on any given day I am gifted with personalized judicial and ecological news from Canada, the States and beyond. With the click of a mouse a daily itinerary is before me and I appreciate those who take the time to "Pass It to the Left".
While much of what we share is from news outlets and other mainstream media, what I cherish the most are contributions from everyday people passionate about making a difference. On Saturday a "Note" was posted on Facebook and it was so informative that I asked the writer, Lydie Meunier, if she would let me post it here to share with all of you and she graciously accepted.
Lydia brilliantly opens our eyes to scheming corporations and the U.S. Prison Industrial Complex coveting much sought after jobs and profiting greatly from free and cheap inmate labour. It's also a shocking glimpse of what will happen here in Canada if the Conservatives are re-elected and allowed to proceed with their fear driven crime agenda and American style prison plans.
GUEST POST
U.S. Unemployment Exacerbated by the Outsourcing of Jobs to Prisons
By Lydie Meunier
SLAVERY IS BACK IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Call your Congress Members and Ask them to Put a Stop to this Infamy!!!
I know that many people don't want to look into prison labor and the impact it has on unemployment figures because this is a disturbing issue. And yet, Jobs are outsourced to prisons, and slavery is being reinstated because corporations are counting on, and taking advantage of folks' apathy and disdains for prisoners... Meanwhile jobs for law abiding citizens are taken away from them to be given to cheap prison labor.
Today, prisoners are being exploited by corporations, paid more or less 40 cts/hour, more often less than more, sometimes paid nothing at all (see current situation in Georgia prisons not covered by the media), in lieu of the minimum $7.25/hour that corporations would have to pay to law abiding citizens. The difference, quite clearly, contributes to major corporate profits, while law abiding citizens are still unemployed and continue to lose their jobs.
On the FREE National market (vs. the WALLED industrial complex market), only 9% of our GDP comes from manufacturing. You can not sustain a middle class lifestyle with a service economy. To turn that 9 % into a much higher number, we need to introduce a new Bill in Congress to stop the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to prisons (outsourcing to prisons is now called "insourcing").
When you consider the major corporations that employ prison labor (furniture factories, Microsoft, Boing, IBM, Starbuck, Victoria secret, BP, Sodexo, medical supplies, road signs, military supplies, etc.) you quickly realize that moving jobs back to law abiding citizens would surely help diminish unemployment figures!!!
The way these prison partnerships typically work is that a manufacturer wanting to increase profits moves their equipment, technology, materials and unfinished goods to a factory setting within a prison industry facility. Once up and running, the same products come off the assembly lines and are shipped as before. The difference is this, private sector employees of the company have been terminated or laid off. A handful of employees are usually kept on long enough to train inmates and prison supervisors in the manufacturing used to make the products. Once that is accomplished, they are also eliminated and their positions taken over by a prison industry supervisor.
This insourcing of labor creates quite a number of unemployed citizens. Burdens are placed on state and community social help programs, unemployment compensation, etc. So while the corporation saves lots of money in labor costs - no more unemployment insurance premiums, less expenses in lease of facilities (usually leased by the prison operators at $1.00 per year), and no more employee benefits such as medical insurance, vacations or paid time off - the communities they vacated are left to fund the unemployed left in their wake. In addition the local government loses taxes that were paid by the corporation, previous landlords of the facilities once leased to the corporations are left with vacant property and local shops and other businesses suffer a drop in sales due to the newly unemployed workers left behind.
Efforts to involve Union officials, management and labor leaders in rectifying this issue have been unsuccessful for some reason. Politicians and Union leaders are too busy arguing about outsourcing of our jobs overseas and seem to not have any interest in eliminating or addressing insourcing. The next time you or your neighbor loses your/their job; before looking toward China or India to see if you can see your job making its way there, look the other way and see if perhaps some criminal that stole your car has just as easily stolen your job and income as well.
Source: INSOURCING- A new concept about private sector job losses, by Bob Sloan, November 10, 2010
The prison industrial complex shows the fastest growth in profits, with politicians and judges and lawyers, and the top 2% investing in its stocks, which constitutes the most corrupt conflict of interests: for each incarceration, the private prison industry is not only paid big bulks by our tax money, it also disposes of the people as private property subcontracted to corporations. Meanwhile, we keep paying for the prison industrial complex to sustain itself with our tax money, oblivious to the fact that we are also paying with the loss of our jobs!!!!
Wake up folks!!! This is not only a national disgrace, it is a national scandal!!!
The United States has the highest incarceration rate!!!! Do you want to know why? Follow the money!!!
Here is a report for you to read to understand the mess this country is in regarding employment politics by regressing into slavery The prison industry in the United States: big business and a new form of slavery
Civilian Inmate Labor Camps designed to manufacture army supplies Jobs that used to be performed by law abiding citizens
Insourcing - Transfer of Private Industry Jobs to Prison Industry-Made in USA
PRIVATIZED PRISONS - PRISON LABOR IS SLAVERY
Here are more links related to more recent news in Georgia where prisoners have been forced to work without pay for their labor, a violation of the 13th Amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude:
The Largest Prison Strike In American History Goes Ignored By US Media
Prisoner Strike Enters New Phase, Needs Our Support
Prison labor on the rise in US
Corporatocracy can best be described as: "A type of government in which huge corporations, through bribes, gifts, and the funding of ad campaigns that oppose candidates they don't like, become the driving force behind the executive, judicial and legislative branches". It explains why prison labor is ignored by politicians and main stream media!!!!!
Prisoner Advocate Elaine Brown on Georgia Prison Strike
Private Prison Industry Helped Draft Arizona Immigration Law
Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law
Private Prison Lobby Behind Arizona's Immigration Law
Rachel Maddow: Exposing Private Prison Industry Role in Shaping Arizona's Anti-Immigration Law - August 14, 2010 - Corporate Con Game
PRIVATE PRISONS AND THE ARIZONA ANTI-IMMIGRATION LAW - Dec 13, 2010
VALLEY OF THE DRY BONES: HUMAN BODIES FOR PRIVATE CELLS (2002)
Prison Labor: A Dynamic Sector - Covert Action Quarterly #54 - Fall 1995
Prison Labor - Policy Report 2002
BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle - 2010
Prison labor cheats society - 2001
As Prison Labor Grows, So Does the Debate - Published on Sunday, March 19, 2000 in the New York Times
"One might think an enterprise able to pay unskilled workers just 21 cents an hour would be able to manufacture goods it could sell at rock-bottom prices. Unfortunately, that is not so when the enterprise is Ohio's Penal Industries system." Penal Industries Costs Out of Line - February 3, 2011 - The Intelligencer
"ACLU 2010 report presents the results of a yearlong investigation into modern-day "debtors' prisons," and shows that poor defendants are being jailed at increasingly alarming rates for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to afford." American Civil Liberties Unions - 2010 - See 2011 update
Last year, officials in McIntosh County, Okla., south of Tulsa, issued about 1,500 debt-related arrest warrants, up from about 800 a year before the crisis, according to a court clerk. More than 950 borrowers got similar warrants in Salt Lake City courts last year. Maricopa County, Ariz., officials issued 260 debt-related warrants in 2010 Welcome to Debtors' Prison, 2011 Edition
Other people's suffering makes such a lucrative opportunity for investment Private Prisons Have Future Growth All Locked Up - Oct 20, 2009
Prison Valley - A web documentary exploring the Prison Industry
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
The United States continues to have the largest incarcerated population and the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world.
- Human Rights Watch, World Report, 2008
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
High! Thanks for taking the time to leave a Comment. :)