We
used to complain about the Gulag of the Soviet Union and prison camp
labour in China....
The
Pentagon and Slave Labor in U.S. Prisons
Sara
Flounders
4
February, 2013
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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