21st-Century Slaves: How Corporations Exploit Prison Labor

In the eyes of the corporation, inmate labor is a brilliant strategy in the eternal quest to maximize profit.

AlterNet / By Rania Khalek

There is one group of American workers so disenfranchised that corporations are able to get away with paying them wages that rival those of third-world sweatshops. These laborers have been legally stripped of their political, economic and social rights and ultimately relegated to second-class citizens. They are banned from unionizing, violently silenced from speaking out and forced to work for little to no wages. This marginalization renders them practically invisible, as they are kept hidden from society with no available recourse to improve their circumstances or change their plight.

They are the 2.3 million American prisoners locked behind bars where we cannot see or hear them. And they are modern-day slaves of the 21st century.

Incarceration Nation

It’s no secret that America imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation in history. With just 5 percent of the world’s population, the US currently holds 25 percent of the world's prisoners. In 2008, over 2.3 million Americans were in prison or jail, with one of every 48 working-age men behind bars. That doesn’t include the tens of thousands of detained undocumented immigrants facing deportation, prisoners awaiting sentencing, or juveniles caught up in the school-to-prison pipeline. Perhaps it’s reassuring to some that the US still holds the number one title in at least one arena, but needless to say the hyper-incarceration plaguing America has had a damaging effect on society at large.

According to a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), US prison rates are not just excessive in comparison to the rest of the world, they are also substantially higher than our own longstanding history. The study finds that incarceration rates between 1880 and 1970 ranged from about 100 to 200 prisoners per 100,000 people. After 1980, the inmate population began to grow much more rapidly than the overall population and the rate climbed from about 220 in 1980 to 458 in 1990, 683 in 2000, and 753 in 2008.

The costs of this incarceration industry are far from evenly distributed, with the impact of excessive incarceration falling predominantly on African-American communities. Although black people make up just 13 percent of the overall population, they account for 40 percent of US prisoners. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), black males are incarcerated at a rate more than 6.5 times that of white males and 2.5 that of Hispanic males and black females are incarcerated at approximately three times the rate of white females and twice that of Hispanic females.

Michelle Alexander points out in her book The New Jim Crow that more black men are in jail, on probation, or on parole than were enslaved in 1850. Higher rates of black drug arrests do not reflect higher rates of black drug offenses. In fact, whites and blacks engage in drug offenses, possession and sales at roughly comparable rates.

Incentivizing Incarceration

Clearly, the US prison system is riddled with racism and classism, but it gets worse. As it turns out, private companies have a cheap, easy labor market, and it isn’t in China, Indonesia, Haiti, or Mexico. It’s right here in the land of the free, where large corporations increasingly employ prisoners as a source of cheap and sometimes free labor.

In the eyes of the corporation, inmate labor is a brilliant strategy in the eternal quest to maximize profit. By dipping into the prison labor pool, companies have their pick of workers who are not only cheap but easily controlled. Companies are free to avoid providing benefits like health insurance or sick days, while simultaneously paying little to no wages. They don’t need to worry about unions or demands for vacation time or raises. Inmate workers are full-time and never late or absent because of family problems.

To read the complete article HERE.

In Debt Talks, Obama's Only Won Half the Battle -- And It's the Half That Doesn't Matter As Much

By Steve Benen/Washington Monthly

Murdoch: Hacking Not My Fault; Everybody Done Me Wrong

Adele M. Stan / AlterNet

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How Rupert Murdoch Could Get His Hands On Your Kid's Information--And It's Legal

Erica Hellerstein

1 Million Dead in Iraq? 6 Reasons the Media Hide the True Human Toll of War -- And Why We Let Them

John Tirman / AlterNet

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Julian Assange's Proud Father: My Son Has 'Immense Desire for Justice in the World'

Giles Tremlett / The Guardian

10 Steps to Defeat the Corporatocracy

The only way to overcome the power of money is regain our courage and solidarity. Here's how to do that.

AlterNet /By Bruce E. Levine

Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a "corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.

Some activists insist that this political passivity problem is caused by Americans' ignorance due to corporate media propaganda, and others claim that political passivity is caused by the inability to organize due to a lack of money. However, polls show that on the important issues of our day - from senseless wars, to Wall Street bailouts, to corporate tax-dodging, to health insurance rip-offs - the majority of Americans are not ignorant to the reality that they are being screwed. And American history is replete with organizational examples - from the Underground Railroad, to the Great Populist Revolt, to the Flint sit-down strike, to large wildcat strikes a generation ago - of successful rebels who had little money but lots of guts and solidarity.

The elite spend their lives stockpiling money and have the financial clout to bribe, divide and conquer the rest of us. The only way to overcome the power of money is with the power of courage and solidarity. When we regain our guts and solidarity, we can then more wisely select from - and implement - time-honored strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have long used to defeat the elite. So, how do we regain our guts and solidarity?

1. Create the Cultural and Psychological "Building Blocks" for Democratic Movements

Historian Lawrence Goodwyn has studied democratic movements such as Solidarity in Poland, and he has written extensively about the populist movement in the United States that occurred during the end of the 19th century (what he calls "the largest democratic mass movement in American history"). Goodwyn concludes that democratic movements are initiated by people who are neither resigned to the status quo nor intimidated by established powers. For Goodwyn, the cultural and psychological building blocks of democratic movements are individual self-respect and collective self-confidence. Without individual self-respect, we do not believe that we are worthy of power or capable of utilizing power wisely, and we accept as our role being a subject of power. Without collective self-confidence, we do not believe that we can succeed in wresting away power from our rulers.

Thus, it is the job of all of us - from parents, to students, to teachers, to journalists, to clergy, to psychologists, to artists and EVERYBODY who gives a damn about genuine democracy - to create individual self-respect and collective self-confidence.

2. Confront and Transform ALL Institutions that Have Destroyed Individual Self-Respect and Collective Self-Confidence

In "Get Up, Stand Up, " I detail 12 major institutional and cultural areas that have broken people's sprit of resistance, and all are "battlefields for democracy" in which we can fight to regain our individual self-respect and collective self confidence:

• Television

• Isolation and bureaucratization

• "Fundamentalist consumerism" and advertising/propaganda

• Student loan debt and indentured servitude

• Surveillance

• The decline of unions/solidarity among working people

• Greed and a "money-centric" culture

To read more HERE.

Corporativismo refrendado

La Jornada

Resulta difícil imaginar un cuadro más ilustrativo de la persistencia de alianzas políticas impresentables entre el gobierno federal y las expresiones más descompuestas, arcaicas y antidemocráticas del sindicalismo, así como de la insensibilidad, compartida por autoridades y liderazgos sindicales, ante las necesidades de los trabajadores y de la población en general en la presente coyuntura, que la ceremonia de investidura de Joaquín Gamboa Pascoe –secretario general de la Confederación de Trabajadores de México– como nuevo presidente del Congreso del Trabajo, celebrada el pasado miércoles en Los Pinos.
Durante esa reunión, que remitió inevitablemente a los besamanos tradicionales de las presidencias priístas –y que han encontrado continuidad, por lo que puede verse, bajo las siglas del blanquiazul–, el titular del Ejecutivo federal, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, reiteró inverosímiles pronósticos en torno a una rápida superación de la actual crisis económica, convocó al llamado sindicalismo oficial a “cerrar filas” y reclamó “unidad y colaboración” ante los problemas que enfrenta el país, elogió el “sentido nacional y patriótico” del dirigente cetemista y manifestó que su gobierno es y será “respetuoso de las conquistas de los trabajadores y de la autonomía sindical”. Por su parte, Gamboa Pascoe ratificó su “solidaridad, respeto y afecto” hacia la presente administración, alabó la actitud “valiente y viril” de Calderón y se declaró admirado por la “agilidad” y la “urgencia” con que el político michoacano ha respondido, a su parecer, ante el desorden económico mundial.
De tal forma, el líder cetemista dejó en claro su obsecuencia ante un gobierno que ha mantenido intacta la aplicación de una política económica de corte antipopular y lesiva para amplios sectores de la población –incluidos los asalariados, a los que Gamboa dice representar– y demostró, con ello, que su propósito no es la defensa de los trabajadores y el mejoramiento de sus condiciones de vida, sino el empeño por mantener privilegios, prebendas y posiciones de poder en el actual ciclo de gobierno.

De su lado, Calderón Hinojosa, además de reiterar su característica indolencia y su propensión a edulcorar la realidad, refrendó su disposición a legitimar, en razón de la conveniencia política, a cúpulas sindicales charras corruptas, así esto implique ir en contra de las inercias ideológicas en las que el gobernante se formó y, por supuesto, en contra de los principios que debería observar el jefe de un Estado que se reclama democrático. La más acabada expresión de estas actitudes se refleja en la alianza del calderonismo con la “dirigente vitalicia” del magisterio, Elba Esther Gordillo, quien ejerce, ya sea de manera personal o a través de sus operadores, una amplia influencia en las decisiones políticas del actual gobierno.
En suma, durante la ceremonia del pasado miércoles quedó en evidencia que la estructura corporativa que caracterizó al régimen priísta se mantiene, al día de hoy, intacta en lo esencial, de espaldas a las necesidades del país y a la realidad misma. A pesar de la disminución que los sindicatos han sufrido en sus filas, los elementos rectores de tal relación son los de antaño: la connivencia, el buen trato y el otorgamiento de prebendas para los liderazgos que acepten compartir complicidades en el poder; represión, persecución y hostigamiento político para quienes no lo hagan. Ante ello, queda en entredicho la transición democrática que supuestamente tuvo lugar en el año 2000 y, en cambio, pareciera que el recambio de siglas y colores en la Presidencia de la República fue sólo eso: una simulación.