PART 1
The Pentagon & slave labor in U.S. prisons
By
Sara Flounders
Published Jun 6, 2011 8:46 PM
Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing
high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles,
launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank
missiles, and other guided missile systems. A March article by journalist and
financial researcher Justin Rohrlich of World in Review is worth a closer look
at the full implications of this ominous development. (minyanville.com)
The expanding use of prison industries, which pay slave wages, as a way to
increase profits for giant military corporations is a frontal attack on the
rights of all workers.
Prison labor — with no union protection, overtime pay, vacation days,
pensions, benefits, health and safety protection, or Social Security
withholding — also makes complex components for McDonnell
Douglas/Boeing’s F-15 fighter aircraft, the General Dynamics/Lockheed
Martin F-16, and Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter. Prison labor produces
night-vision goggles, body armor, camouflage uniforms, radio and communication
devices, and lighting systems and components for 30-mm to 300-mm battleship
anti-aircraft guns, along with land mine sweepers and electro-optical equipment
for the BAE Systems Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s laser rangefinder.
Prisoners recycle toxic electronic equipment and overhaul military
vehicles.
Labor in federal prisons is contracted out by UNICOR, previously known as
Federal Prison Industries, a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the
Bureau of Prisons. In 14 prison factories, more than 3,000 prisoners
manufacture electronic equipment for land, sea and airborne communication.
UNICOR is now the U.S. government’s 39th largest contractor, with 110
factories at 79 federal penitentiaries.
The majority of UNICOR’s products and services are on contract to orders
from the Department of Defense. Giant multinational corporations purchase parts
assembled at some of the lowest labor rates in the world, then resell the
finished weapons components at the highest rates of profit. For example,
Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Corporation subcontract components, then assemble
and sell advanced weapons systems to the Pentagon.
Increased profits, unhealthy workplaces
However, the Pentagon is not the only buyer. U.S. corporations are the
world’s largest arms dealers, while weapons and aircraft are the largest
U.S. export. The U.S. State Department, Department of Defense and diplomats
pressure NATO members and dependent countries around the world into
multibillion-dollar weapons purchases that generate further corporate profits,
often leaving many countries mired in enormous debt.
But the fact that the capitalist state has found yet another way to drastically
undercut union workers’ wages and ensure still higher profits to military
corporations — whose weapons wreak such havoc around the world — is
an ominous development.
According to CNN Money, the U.S. highly skilled and well-paid “aerospace
workforce has shrunk by 40 percent in the past 20 years. Like many other
industries, the defense sector has been quietly outsourcing production (and
jobs) to cheaper labor markets overseas.” (Feb. 24) It seems that with
prison labor, these jobs are also being outsourced domestically.
Meanwhile, dividends and options to a handful of top stockholders and CEO
compensation packages at top military corporations exceed the total payment of
wages to the more than 23,000 imprisoned workers who produce UNICOR parts.
The prison work is often dangerous, toxic and unprotected. At FCC Victorville,
a federal prison located at an old U.S. airbase, prisoners clean, overhaul and
reassemble tanks and military vehicles returned from combat and coated in toxic
spent ammunition, depleted uranium dust and chemicals.
A federal lawsuit by prisoners, food service workers and family members at FCI
Marianna, a minimum security women’s prison in Florida, cited that toxic
dust containing lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic poisoned those who worked at
UNICOR’s computer and electronic recycling factory.
Prisoners there worked covered in dust, without safety equipment, protective
gear, air filtration or masks. The suit explained that the toxic dust caused
severe damage to nervous and reproductive systems, lung damage, bone disease,
kidney failure, blood clots, cancers, anxiety, headaches, fatigue, memory
lapses, skin lesions, and circulatory and respiratory problems. This is one of
eight federal prison recycling facilities — employing 1,200 prisoners
— run by UNICOR.
After years of complaints the Justice Department’s Office of the
Inspector General and the Federal Occupational Health Service concurred in
October 2008 that UNICOR has jeopardized the lives and safety of untold numbers
of prisoners and staff. (Prison Legal News, Feb. 17, 2009)
Racism & U.S. prisons
The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country in the world. With
less than 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. imprisons more than 25
percent of all people imprisoned in the world.
There are more than 2.3 million prisoners in federal, state and local prisons
in the U.S. Twice as many people are under probation and parole. Many tens of
thousands of other prisoners include undocumented immigrants facing
deportation, prisoners awaiting sentencing and youthful offenders in categories
considered reform or detention.
The racism that pervades every aspect of life in capitalist society —
from jobs, income and housing to education and opportunity — is most
brutally reflected by who is caught up in the U.S. prison system.
More than 60 percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color. Seventy percent of
those being sentenced under the three strikes law in California — which
requires mandatory sentences of 25 years to life after three felony convictions
— are people of color. Nationally, 39 percent of African-American men in
their 20s are in prison, on probation or on parole. The U.S. imprisons more
people than South Africa did under apartheid. (Linn Washington,
“Incarceration Nation”)
The U.S. prison population is not only the largest in the world — it is
relentlessly growing. The U.S. prison population is more than five times what
it was 30 years ago.
In 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president, there were 400,000 prisoners in
the U.S. Today the number exceeds 2.3 million. In California the prison
population soared from 23,264 in 1980 to 170,000 in 2010. The Pennsylvania
prison population climbed from 8,243 to 51,487 in those same years. There are
now more African-American men in prison, on probation or on parole than were
enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began, according to Law Professor
Michelle Alexander in the book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in
the Age of Colorblindness.”
Today a staggering 1-in-100 adults in the U.S. are living behind bars. But this
crime, which breaks families and destroys lives, is not evenly distributed. In
major urban areas one-half of Black men have criminal records. This means
life-long, legalized discrimination in student loans, financial assistance,
access to public housing, mortgages, the right to vote and, of course, the
possibility of being hired for a job.
Next: Slave labor, private prisons and the prison-industrial
complex.
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