[Reader-list] Slave labour in US Prisons

[A. Mani]

The Pentagon and Slave Labor in U.S. Prisons

by Sara Flounders


Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are
manufacturing high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced
Capability 3 missiles, launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically
tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles, and other guided missile
systems. A March article by journalist and financial researcher Justin
Rohrlich of World in Review is worth a closer look at the full
implications of this ominous development. (minyanville.com)

The expanding use of prison industries, which pay slave wages, as a
way to increase profits for giant military corporations, is a frontal
attack on the rights of all workers.

Prison labor — with no union protection, overtime pay, vacation days,
pensions, benefits, health and safety protection, or Social Security
withholding — also makes complex components for McDonnell
Douglas/Boeing’s F-15 fighter aircraft, the General Dynamics/Lockheed
Martin F-16, and Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter. Prison labor
produces night-vision goggles, body armor, camouflage uniforms, radio
and communication devices, and lighting systems and components for
30-mm to 300-mm battleship anti-aircraft guns, along with land mine
sweepers and electro-optical equipment for the BAE Systems Bradley
Fighting Vehicle’s laser rangefinder. Prisoners recycle toxic
electronic equipment and overhaul military vehicles.

Labor in federal prisons is contracted out by UNICOR, previously known
as Federal Prison Industries, a quasi-public, for-profit corporation
run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 14 prison factories, more than 3,000
prisoners manufacture electronic equipment for land, sea and airborne
communication. UNICOR is now the U.S. government’s 39th largest
contractor, with 110 factories at 79 federal penitentiaries.

The majority of UNICOR’s products and services are on contract to
orders from the Department of Defense. Giant multinational
corporations purchase parts assembled at some of the lowest labor
rates in the world, then resell the finished weapons components at the
highest rates of profit. For example, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon
Corporation subcontract components, then assemble and sell advanced
weapons systems to the Pentagon.

Increased profits, unhealthy workplaces

However, the Pentagon is not the only buyer. U.S. corporations are the
world’s largest arms dealers, while weapons and aircraft are the
largest U.S. export. The U.S. State Department, Department of Defense
and diplomats pressure NATO members and dependent countries around the
world into multibillion-dollar weapons purchases that generate further
corporate profits, often leaving many countries mired in enormous
debt.

But the fact that the capitalist state has found yet another way to
drastically undercut union workers’ wages and ensure still higher
profits to military corporations — whose weapons wreak such havoc
around the world — is an ominous development.

According to CNN Money, the U.S. highly skilled and well-paid
“aerospace workforce has shrunk by 40 percent in the past 20 years.
Like many other industries, the defense sector has been quietly
outsourcing production (and jobs) to cheaper labor markets overseas.”
(Feb. 24) It seems that with prison labor, these jobs are also being
outsourced domestically.

Meanwhile, dividends and options to a handful of top stockholders and
CEO compensation packages at top military corporations exceed the
total payment of wages to the more than 23,000 imprisoned workers who
produce UNICOR parts.

The prison work is often dangerous, toxic and unprotected. At FCC
Victorville, a federal prison located at an old U.S. airbase,
prisoners clean, overhaul and reassemble tanks and military vehicles
returned from combat and coated in toxic spent ammunition, depleted
uranium dust and chemicals.

A federal lawsuit by prisoners, food service workers and family
members at FCI Marianna, a minimum security women’s prison in Florida,
cited that toxic dust containing lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic
poisoned those who worked at UNICOR’s computer and electronic
recycling factory.

Prisoners there worked covered in dust, without safety equipment,
protective gear, air filtration or masks. The suit explained that the
toxic dust caused severe damage to nervous and reproductive systems,
lung damage, bone disease, kidney failure, blood clots, cancers,
anxiety, headaches, fatigue, memory lapses, skin lesions, and
circulatory and respiratory problems. This is one of eight federal
prison recycling facilities — employing 1,200 prisoners — run by
UNICOR.

After years of complaints the Justice Department’s Office of the
Inspector General and the Federal Occupational Health Service
concurred in October 2008 that UNICOR has jeopardized the lives and
safety of untold numbers of prisoners and staff. (Prison Legal News,
Feb. 17, 2009)

Racism & U.S. prisons

The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country in the
world. With less than 5 percent of the world population, the U.S.
imprisons more than 25 percent of all people imprisoned in the world.

There are more than 2.3 million prisoners in federal, state and local
prisons in the U.S. Twice as many people are under probation and
parole. Many tens of thousands of other prisoners include undocumented
immigrants facing deportation, prisoners awaiting sentencing and
youthful offenders in categories considered reform or detention.

The racism that pervades every aspect of life in capitalist society —
from jobs, income and housing to education and opportunity — is most
brutally reflected by who is caught up in the U.S. prison system.

More than 60 percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color. Seventy
percent of those being sentenced under the three strikes law in
California — which requires mandatory sentences of 25 years to life
after three felony convictions — are people of color. Nationally, 39
percent of African-American men in their 20s are in prison, on
probation or on parole. The U.S. imprisons more people than South
Africa did under apartheid. (Linn Washington, “Incarceration Nation”)

The U.S. prison population is not only the largest in the world — it
is relentlessly growing. The U.S. prison population is more than five
times what it was 30 years ago.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president, there were 400,000
prisoners in the U.S. Today the number exceeds 2.3 million. In
California the prison population soared from 23,264 in 1980 to 170,000
in 2010. The Pennsylvania prison population climbed from 8,243 to
51,487 in those same years. There are now more African-American men in
prison, on probation or on parole than were enslaved in 1850, before
the Civil War began, according to Law Professor Michelle Alexander in
the book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness.”

Today a staggering 1-in-100 adults in the U.S. are living behind bars.
But this crime, which breaks families and destroys lives, is not
evenly distributed. In major urban areas one-half of Black men have
criminal records. This means life-long, legalized discrimination in
student loans, financial assistance, access to public housing,
mortgages, the right to vote and, of course, the possibility of being
hired for a job.

State Prisons contracting slave labor

It is not only federal prisons that contract out prison labor to top
corporations. State prisons that used forced prison labor in
plantations, laundries and highway chain gangs increasingly seek to
sell prison labor to corporations trolling the globe in search of the
cheapest possible labor.

One agency asks: “Are you experiencing high employee turnover? Worried
about the costs of employee benefits? Unhappy with out-of-state or
offshore suppliers? Getting hit by overseas competition? Having
trouble motivating your workforce? Thinking about expansion space?
Then Washington State Department of Corrections Private Sector
Partnerships is for you.” (educate-yourself.org, July 25, 2005)

Major corporations profiting from the slave labor of prisoners include
Motorola, Compaq, Honeywell, Microsoft, Boeing, Revlon, Chevron, TWA,
Victoria’s Secret and Eddie Bauer.

IBM, Texas Instruments and Dell get circuit boards made by Texas
prisoners. Tennessee inmates sew jeans for Kmart and JCPenney. Tens of
thousands of youth flipping hamburgers for minimum wages at McDonald’s
wear uniforms sewn by prison workers, who are forced to work for much
less.

In California, as in many states, prisoners who refuse to work are
moved to disciplinary housing and lose canteen privileges as well as
“good time” credit, which slices hard time off their sentences.

Systematic abuse, beatings, prolonged isolation and sensory
deprivation, and lack of medical care make U.S. prison conditions
among the worst in the world. Ironically, working under grueling
conditions for pennies an hour is treated as a “perk” for good
behavior.

In December, Georgia inmates went on strike and refused to leave their
cells at six prisons for more than a week. In one of the largest
prison protests in U.S. history, prisoners spoke of being forced to
work seven days a week for no pay. Prisoners were beaten if they
refused to work.

Private prisons for profit

In the ruthless search to maximize profits and grab hold of every
possible source of income, almost every public agency and social
service is being outsourced to private for-profit contractors.

In the U.S. military this means there are now more private contractors
and mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan than there are U.S. or NATO
soldiers.

In cities and states across the U.S., hospitals, medical care
facilities, schools, cafeterias, road maintenance, water supply
services, sewage departments, sanitation, airports and tens of
thousands of social programs that receive public funding are being
contracted out to for-profit corporations. Anything publicly owned and
paid for by generations of past workers’ taxes — from libraries to
concert halls and parks — is being sold or leased at fire sale prices.

All this is motivated and lobbied for by right-wing think tanks like
that set up by Koch Industries and their owners, Charles and David
Koch, as a way to cut costs, lower wages and pensions, and undercut
public service unions.

The most gruesome privatizations are the hundreds of for-profit
prisons being established.

The inmate population in private for-profit prisons tripled between
1987 and 2007. By 2007 there were 264 such prison facilities, housing
almost 99,000 adult prisoners. (house.leg.state.mn.us, Feb. 24, 2009)
Companies operating such facilities include the Corrections
Corporation of America, the GEO Group Inc. and Community Education
Centers.

Prison bonds provide a lucrative return for capitalist investors such
as Merrill-Lynch, Shearson Lehman, American Express and Allstate.
Prisoners are traded from one state to another based on the most
profitable arrangements.

Militarism and prisons

Hand in hand with the military-industrial complex, U.S. imperialism
has created a massive prison-industrial complex that generates
billions of dollars annually for businesses and industries profiting
from mass incarceration.

For decades workers in the U.S. have been assured that they also
benefit from imperialist looting by the giant multinational
corporations. But today more than half the federal budget is absorbed
by the costs of maintaining the military machine and the corporations
who are guaranteed profits for equipping the Pentagon. That is the
only budget category in federal spending that is guaranteed to
increase by at least 5 percent a year — at a time when every social
program is being cut to the bone.

The sheer economic weight of militarism seeps into the fabric of
society at every level. It fuels racism and reaction. The political
influence of the Pentagon and the giant military and oil corporations
— with their thousands of high-paid lobbyists, media pundits and
network of links into every police force in the country — fuels
growing repression and an expanding prison population.

The military, oil and banking conglomerates, interlinked with the
police and prisons, have a stranglehold on the U.S. capitalist economy
and reins of political power, regardless of who is president or what
political party is in office. The very survival of these global
corporations is based on immediate maximization of profits. They are
driven to seize every resource and source of potential profits.

Thoroughly rational solutions are proposed whenever the human and
economic cost of militarism and repression is discussed. The billions
spent for war and fantastically destructive weapons systems could
provide five to seven times more jobs if spent on desperately needed
social services, education and rebuilding essential infrastructure. Or
it could provide free university education, considering the fact that
it costs far more to imprison people than to educate them.

Why aren’t such reasonable solutions ever chosen? Because military
contracts generate far larger guaranteed profits to the military and
the oil industries, which have a decisive influence on the U.S.
economy.

The prison-industrial complex — including the prison system, prison
labor, private prisons, police and repressive apparatus, and their
continuing expansion — are a greater source of profit and are
reinforced by the climate of racism and reaction. Most rational and
socially useful solutions are not considered viable options.

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