US Corporate sweatshops

[tangent4ronpaul]

Broken out from the lightbulb thread

YouTube - Privatized Prisons and Prison Labor IS Slavery (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt6gPZO8XRw)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289


Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million - mostly Black and Hispanic - are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don't have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don't like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_3440.shtml


Because of this herding, private companies like Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) (New York Stock Exchange symbol: CXW)—one of the nation’s largest prison builders, owners and operators—reaps major benefits. In 2006, CCA earned $1.3 billion and its 2006 Annual Report indicates these numbers will increase based upon the Pew Charitable Trusts’ “Public Safety, Public Spending—Forecasting America’s Prison Population 2007-2011” report, which anticipates that by 2011, federal and state prison populations will climb by more than 192,000 new inmates.

CCA’s 67 facilities are concentrated throughout Texas, Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Georgia, Washington, D.C., Montana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio and Louisiana.

Other companies which utilize prison labor, according to The Mandala Project’s 2001 web posting, “U.S. Prison Labor at Home and Abroad,” include: MicroJet, Nike, Lockhart Technologies, Inc., TWA, Dell Computers, Microsoft, Eddie Bauer, Planet Hollywood, Wilson Sporting Goods, J.C. Penney, Victoria’s Secret, Best Western Hotels, Honda, K-Mart, Target, McDonald’s, Burger King, “Prison Blues” jeans line, New York, New York Hotel/Casino, Imperial Palace Hotel/Casino, “No Fear” Clothing Line, C.M.T. Blues, Konica, Allstate, Merrill Lynch, Shearson Lehman, Louisiana Pacific, Parke-Davis and Upjohn.

In 1934, Congress established the Federal Prison Industries (FPI), trade named UNICOR, to employ and provide job training to inmates within the Federal Bureau of Prisons, requiring those medically able to work for 12 to 40 cents per hour for institution work assignments, and 23 cents to $1.15 for work in UNICOR factories.

In 2005, it generated $765 million in sales from its 106 factories. And as of last September, its highest net sales in electronics at $233.2 million, derived from 3,348 inmate workers throughout Texas, Connecticut, New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, New York, Wisconsin, Arizona and Minnesota.

UNICOR’s customers include the Department of Defense, General Services Administration, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Social Security Administration, Department of Justice, United States Postal Service, Department of Transportation, Department of the Treasury, Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

-t

[erowe1]

I don't have any problem with punishing criminals with slave labor, although I'd rather see the profits made off of them go to their victims and not the state. But where the problem here lies is not in the punishment itself, but in the fact that the prison population includes so many people who shouldn't be there to begin with.

Plus, I have to differ with the implication that sweatshops are bad things. Sweatshops are good things. We need more of them.

[tangent4ronpaul]

The people that should be in prison generally don't qualify for this sort of thing. Most of these people were busted for possession of drugs. Small quantities of drugs. One of the main product lines is military equipment.

I certainly don't agree that we need more sweat shops. Reducing the US Economy to that of the the third world is a massive FAIL!

The other problem is that these corporations lobby for longer sentences and the US prison population is steadily increasing. This industry is one of the fastest growing in the country.

-t

[erowe1]

The people that should be in prison generally don't qualify for this sort of thing. Most of these people were busted for possession of drugs. Small quantities of drugs. One of the main product lines is military equipment.
That aspect of this I definitely don't like.


I certainly don't agree that we need more sweat shops. Reducing the US Economy to that of the the third world is a massive FAIL!
Allowing people to be free to offer their labor under whatever conditions they want for whatever wage they want, rather than under the conditions the government dictates for wages the government dictates, does not equal a reduction of the economy, it equals an expansion of it. There are some ways that third world countries have more freedom than we do, and allowing people to work in sweatshops is one of them.

[tangent4ronpaul]

That aspect of this I definitely don't like.


Allowing people to be free to offer their labor under whatever conditions they want for whatever wage they want, rather than under the conditions the government dictates for wages the government dictates, does not equal a reduction of the economy, it equals an expansion of it. There are some ways that third world countries have more freedom than we do, and allowing people to work in sweatshops is one of them.

The voluntary aspect I have no problem with. This is anything but voluntary and corporate/government exploitation.

-t

[erowe1]

The voluntary aspect I have no problem with. This is anything but voluntary and corporate/government exploitation.


I get that. I just recoil at the use of the word "sweatshop" as though it means something bad.

[Brian4Liberty]

Incentivize it, and you will get more of it...