Slave labor continues in Georgia

Lakeland, Ga., is a small town that is 67 percent white, 29 percent African-American and 0.7 percent Native American. The average salary of working males is $29,257 and females $19,276, with most residents living below the 2000 poverty level. Nonetheless, the city of Lakeland is building a state-of-the-art city hall and police department that will cost the city a projected $600,000.

According to Lakeland’s mayor, Bill Darsey, the city will save on wages because it will be using free labor — prison labor. The ruse here is that prisoners will learn a skill they supposedly can use when once released.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world with 754 out of every 100,000 people imprisoned. That’s almost 1 percent of the country’s population in jail, including 92,854 juveniles. African Americans, who make up just 12 percent of the U.S. population, constitute 44 percent of the prison population. That is an enormously disproportionate rate.

Mayor Darsey went on to state that the construction project’s electrical work, unpaid for rather than being done by skilled paid labor, saved the city $30,000.

Lakeland has an unemployment rate of 11.8 percent. Men and women living in poverty and seeking work cannot compete with the free labor of prisoners. These prisoners will not receive any wages and most likely will not be able to obtain work upon release because of the stigma of being a felon.

Clayton County, Ga., prisoners are being used to clean and maintain foreclosed homes now owned by banks. The continued use of free unskilled prison labor pits these men and women against their fellow unemployed workers on the outside. Georgia’s Department of Prisoners has asserted that they have “right to work” laws on their side. These racist laws are based on the South’s plantation system in the time of slavery.

The South was built on the backs of African Americans and indentured slaves who, like today’s prisoners, have no say in how their labor can be used. The South’s “right to work” laws are a continuous block to organizing by unions and a major factor in the superexploitation of Southern workers.