Prison Labor: A Right-wing Jobs Program for America

This so-called "work opportunity" is the first tangible product of Gov. Scott Walker's corporate-scripted mugging of the collective bargaining rights of teachers and other civil servants. He and his legislative cohorts rammed a bill into law this year to strip public employees of their democratic rights in the workplace. So, government managers can now replace them willy-nilly with low-wage workers — even with free prison labor.
Jim Ladwig, the executive honcho of Racine County, has leapt on this like a chicken on a juicy June bug. The day the law took effect, he announced that such jobs as landscaping and snow-shoveling would be transferred from unionized county workers to prisoners. The captives will receive no pay, but they could receive compensation in the form of reduced sentences. "We have a win-win when we use the inmates," exulted Ladwig.   | Common Dreams

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• Freedom Rider: Prison Slave Labor

America has long been an incarceration state whose penal system is a direct descendant of Black chattel slavery. The system is swiftly returning to its roots with innovations on extraction of free labor, with probationers put to work on Georgia farms and prisoners substituted for union labor in Wisconsin. “The mania to save government dollars and the American propensity to punish and permanently criminalize vast numbers of black people will combine to make these new policies extremely popular.”