The US and UK are against slavery…right? It’s an abomination and neither nation could possibly condone it…right?

People who grow up in either country can be comfortable knowing that their governments will never force them to work without pay…right?

Wrong … Wrong … and … WRONG!

Both the US and UK not only allow slavery, both actively support it. Both nations not only support it, but also enforce it. And they do so in a manner that undermines the employment opportunities of other citizens, not just those forced to work without pay.

What is slavery, if not the systemic forcing of people to work without wages? In the US, prisoners are routinely forced to work without pay for the benefit of corporations, or for so little it amounts to none. In the UK, young people are forced to work without pay for corporations or lose their minimal job benefits.

It’s easy to stand on the outside and say, “Well, people in prison have no rights. What’s wrong with forcing them to work?” or “Young people need to learn about the work world, so what better way than to have the experience?” Even if these were legitimate arguments—and they are not!—it doesn’t address the effects on the rest of society, which loses ground to corporate interests with every hour a person is forced to work without fair payment.

United States Government-Authorized Slavery

In the United States, many prisons send prisoners to do labor for corporations. The prisons—often privatized—profit from this slave labor, and the corporations profit from paying substandard prices for the labor. The prisoners? If they’re lucky, they may get to serve less time. At least 30 states have laws in place that allow convicts to be used as slaves by businesses.

Of course, they don’t use the term slave, they say “labor”. But labor that’s coerced and doesn’t receive fair pay can only legitimately be termed slavery—especially when a corporation, or government, profits from it. And that’s exactly what’s happening.

Prisoners make a huge array of products, including blue jeans, electronics, furniture, and automobiles. Honda uses convict labor to replace auto workers who had made $20-30 an hour. They now pay about $2 an hour. Konica pays less than 50¢ an hour to get copiers repaired. Prisoners restock shelves at Toys R Us. Prison labor in Oregon and California is so cheap that clothing made by them gets shipped outside the country. These were jobs that had paid living wages, wages that supported families and bought homes. Is it any wonder that the housing market crashed? Is it any wonder that unemployment is so high? Is it any wonder that so many people are in prison for victimless crimes?

Prisoners do not have the ability to refuse to work, nor can they protest at killingly-long hours or other miserable conditions. In fact, they do not contract for their labor. The prisons do, and the prisons profit from it.  In Texas, Lockhart Technologies fired all 150 of its workers and opened up manufacturing at the prison. Though they pay minimum wage for each slave, most of it is kept by the prison. The slaves keep only 20 percent.

Prisoners are often subjected to conditions that are outright illegal, such as sorting through hazardous waste without protective gear. Those who refuse or object to bad conditions are subjected to punishment, ranging from losing time off for good behavior to loss of library and recreation privileges to solitary confinement.

While Americans condemn prison conditions in other countries, they do so wearing blinders that keep them from seeing the slave labor and the fact that the US has, by far, the largest number of prisoners by any measure one wishes to use. China, with a population that is 3-4 times greater, has half a million fewer prisoners than the US’s 2 million. That number represents a full quarter of the entire world’s 8 million prisoners.

Again, I ask: Is it any wonder that so many people are in prison for victimless crimes? Who benefits? The answer is blindingly obvious: corporations. Sociopathic corporations.

United Kingdom Government-Authorized Slavery

While not as extensive as in the US, the UK also uses prison slave labor. Prisoners in England and Wales are used by Virgin Atlantic, Monarch Airlines, Speedy Hire, Travis Perkins, and the book publisher Macmillan. Though not as extensive as in the US, the Conservative (Tory) government intends to expand the use of prison labor.

Of course, the Tories are trying to pass it off as a means to help prisoners, to send them back into society as law-abiding citizens, and so forth and so on. That is, they say such things when they’re caught…but the truth is that the prison slave program is kept as quiet as possible.

The UK’s prison program is nowhere near as extensive as that in the US—but the UK has another way of extracting unpaid labor from its citizens. Young people trying to enter the workforce are ripe for plucking, and they’re being well-picked. The jobless benefit is £53 per week, itself not an amount on which one can survive. To get that, it is, of course, necessary to actively seek work, an entirely reasonable demand.

Working at entry-level unskilled jobs in corporations entirely unrelated to one’s training and education can only interfere with job hunting, but that’s exactly what’s happening—and youths are being forced to take these mind-numbing jobs at no pay for as long as 8 weeks. It’s called ”work experience”—things like shelf stocking and cleaning. Imagine being Cait Reilly, a 22 year old with a degree in geology, forced to work stocking shelves for Poundland, a chain that prices all items at a pound. She’s in that position, in spite of having experience doing precisely that, and doing it for pay. The suggestion that this is genuine work experience is a farce. It is one thing, and one thing only—slave labor for a corporation. Tesco supermarkets, Sainsbury’s, Argos catalog store, and others are taking advantage.

Slavery Is Slavery

No matter what it’s called, slavery is slavery. The UK and the US are forcing people to work without pay, or with very little pay. There isn’t even a promise of a future job. Claims that they’re being trained are ludicrous. This is being done in the face of unemployment rates unseen in decades.

Not only are the US and UK promoting and enforcing slave labor, they are also stealing real jobs from people, transferring them into a slave labor pool. No wonder unemployment is so high. Not only are jobs being shipped overseas, they’re also being converted into slave labor, and the slaves are fellow citizens.

Sources:

• Prison labor on the rise in US
• Prison Labor as a Money Making Enterprise
• Prisoners promised ‘real wages’ under the Tories
• The battle by the prison service to keep contracts secret
• Young jobseekers told to work without pay or lose unemployment benefits