How US prison labour pads corporate profits at taxpayers' expense

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/06/prison-labor-pads-corporate-profits-taxpayers-expense

How US prison labour pads corporate profits at taxpayers' expense

Thanks to rightwing lobbying, companies can use a loophole to exploit a scheme designed to give offenders work experience

Sadhbh Walshe
guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 July 2012 10.30 EDT

In 1979, Congress created the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (known as PIE; pdf) to establish employment opportunities for inmates "that approximate private sector work opportunities". On the surface, the program is a great idea. It gives prisoners something to do, allows them to contribute to their own upkeep and, hopefully, gives them a better shot of getting an actual living wage job upon release. Such was the intention, anyway.

Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, this is not how the PIE program has worked out. Instead, it has become little more than a tidy profit-making scheme for corporations and other entities willing to exploit the captive labor force – often at the expense of private sector jobs. snip

"Alec has proven expertly capable of devising endless ways to help private corporations benefit from the country's massive prison population."

For companies that balk at the notion of paying workers a living wage, having a cheap and expansive labor force at their beck and call is a win-win situation. For everyone else – the prisoners themselves and the taxpayers who are subsidizing this scheme at the expense of their own jobs and wages – it's a double loss.

[Zalatix]

1. But we need prison labor, for the same reasons we need foreign outsourcing!

Allow me to make fun of an argument that favors cheaper labor - it applies to prison labor as well as outsourcing.

"... please explain how in your proposed regime you will address price elasticity of demand for goods suddenly much more expensive and therefore undesirable (aka not generating much new employment), address the inflation of essential goods and or address the shortages of those goods resulting from price controls that seem likely to be your preferred course of action."



That's what the "bright boys" out there are saying. They will keep saying this until it's their job that gets cut.

[NNN0LHI]

2. Anyone who has ever competed against prison labor wages on their own jobs wouldn't like it

And one of our competitors was using prison labor so I understand this well.

Don

[fasttense]

3. Most Banana Republics and Communist countries exploit their prison labor too.

The bigger the the prison population, the bigger the free labor pool for corporate America.

[HiPointDem]

4. slave labor for our new fascist state. they're losers anyway, they deserve it. workers are losers

too, & deserve shit wages and shit lives because they're stupid enough to believe tv.

[TahitiNut]

5. Cheap, NON-VOTING workers have been a Reich Wing wet dream for over 150 years.

Despite it being illegal under USC, the GOP treats human labor as a commodity. Their attitude is one of entitlement for OWNERS of not only the means of production, but every element of government under which such entitlements are created and enforced ... just like Royalty or Totalitarian forms of governance. The very word "republican" is as obscenely hypocritical as "People's Republic of China" and the "German Democratic Republic]/b]."

[ProfessionalLeftist]

6. And we thought slavery was dead? Hardly. n/t