Corporations using prison labor to grab even more cash
Big business is always looking for a cheaper way to build a widget. And they have found a disturbing solution right here in the U.S. – prison labor.Inmates at the private Lockhart Texas prison, for example, took over the production of circuit boards used by companies such as IBM and Compaq. Meanwhile, at San Quentin State Prison in California, prisoners are handling work previously done at an assembly plant in Mexico.
These practices are wrong for many reasons, as a Global Research report details. For one, it puts productive employees earning fair market wages out of work. That was the case for those workers whose factories were shuttered in Texas and Mexico when their jobs were moved to prisons. Additionally, it "employs" inmates much of the time at slave labor wage levels, all in the name of bigger profits for some of the nation's largest corporations.
Such arrangements are not limited to Texas and California, the report explains:
At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount