New Exposé Tracks ALEC-Private Prison Industry Effort to Replace Unionized Workers with Prison Labor

[robert l. bentham]

MIKE ELK: My co-author, Bob Sloan, who’s an ex-offender, who actually worked in Prison Industries and has dedicated his life to unveiling, you know, the tragedy of Prison Industries, showed how ATL Industries, back in 2005, had 14 million pounds of beef that they knew was infected with rat feces. Now, many people raised the alarms, and they were even trying to pressure ATL Industries to recall the beef. However, the USDA wouldn’t let them recall the beef, even through a voluntary recall, because they didn’t want to draw attention to how much meat and how many other products in this country are being made by prison labor. So, we have an industry, prison labor, for example, in '95, the U.S. government passed a law, the federal government, that now the regulating body for Prison Industries is not the Department Justice, but the National Correctional Industries Association. This is sort of like turning over bank regulation to the American Bankers Association. So we're seeing an industry that’s basically completely unregulated and poses a great threat, not just to American workers, but to the mouths and health of, you know, American children and adults.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/5/new_expos_tracks_alec_private_prison#transcript

guess we'll just have to cut around the rat feces parts....

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

@robert l. bentham

How can America compete with China? By becoming North Korea - the ruling classes never really got over the abolition of slavery - or feudalism. This egalitarian idea of free people working and contracting freely always stood in the way of great wealth and power. Much better to keep most of the people under control and forced to work and if wage slavery gets too expensive and people start thinking they can live without a car or start growing their own food then how do you force them to work for you?

I'm sure it's not just union labour they are after - it's all labour. I think it was around 1996 that I started trying to point this out to people but folks are much too trusting of people in fancy clothes who drive nice cars and live in giant homes.

I'm pretty sure Harper want the same thing for us - he's building more prisons while crime is falling - he's passing tougher sentencing laws to make sure people stay in prison for longer and he's doing this while government is having trouble balancing the budget as it is - not too far down the road someone will suggest we could balance the budget by selling the prisons (for 10% of what we built them for) and we'll be where you are.

 

[robert l. bentham]

@robert l. bentham

How can America compete with China? By becoming North Korea - the ruling classes never really got over the abolition of slavery - or feudalism. This egalitarian idea of free people working and contracting freely always stood in the way of great wealth and power. Much better to keep most of the people under control and forced to work and if wage slavery gets too expensive and people start thinking they can live without a car or start growing their own food then how do you force them to work for you?

I'm sure it's not just union labour they are after - it's all labour. I think it was around 1996 that I started trying to point this out to people but folks are much too trusting of people in fancy clothes who drive nice cars and live in giant homes.

I'm pretty sure Harper want the same thing for us - he's building more prisons while crime is falling - he's passing tougher sentencing laws to make sure people stay in prison for longer and he's doing this while government is having trouble balancing the budget as it is - not too far down the road someone will suggest we could balance the budget by selling the prisons (for 10% of what we built them for) and we'll be where you are.

i always kinda thought the civil war was fought over which direction this country would take to "industrialization". one school of thought presumed the best path was through outright slavery, the other thought it was "indentured servitude hinging upon the promise of a dream". it seems hundreds of years later we are still struggling with this issue. hope we don't have to fight again over which master we prefer...