U.S. conservatives always talk about creating jobs but get SO MAD whenever anyone mentions banning prison labor like imagine the insane ammout of jobs that would be created literally overnight if companies in your country had to actually employ people instead of using slave labor from people that got caught with weed 10 years ago.
Daily reminder that the US, who love to scaremonger about "communist labour camps," have legal slave labour if you're in prison
okay so as much as this post punches above weight on its own i need people to know exactly how many industries in the us are using prison labor, because it is many more than you think:
about 2/3s of prisoners in the united states work and most of those people make nothing for their work. if they make any money it's averaging 52 cents (that's $0.52) per hour and most of the money gets withheld for "room and board, taxes, and court cost" by the prison. some states, including alabama, arkansas, florida, georgia, mississippi, south carolina, and texas, pay nothing. here is a 150 page ACLU report on this that was published in 2022. if you refuse to work you might be sent to solitary or have your parole chances destroyed. there are no labor protections. people get killed. incarcerated people produce billions of dollars a year and almost never get paid.
there are basically three forms of prison labor. the first is labor inside of prisons to keep the prisons running. which means that if they let people out? their admin goes down. which is a reason to not let people out. the second is work release, providing inmate labor to private companies at offsite locations, like poultry plants, cattle and dairy farms, and other agricultural services. (this includes firefighting. incarcerated people are saving your fucking lives for less than five bucks a day.) the third is production of goods for external sale, including farm work, manufacturing, call center, distribution services, and others. and yes, before you ask, this includes immigration detention, which may i remind everyone is made up of civil detainees; immigration violations are not crimes but civil violations and people are trapped and exploited in private prisons and then utilized for profit.
this is legal because of the thirteenth amendment to to the US constitution, which states (and this is a direct quote), that "neither "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the united states[.]"
colorado banned prison labor five years ago but prisoners say it's still going on as of november 2023. there are other state initiatives trying to get prison labor banned, but when the government literally relies on incarcerated people to keep running, it's an uphill fuckin road.
companies which use prison labor or sell products made by prison labor include:
walmart
kroeger
target
aldi
whole foods
mcdonald's
wendy's
starbucks
sprint
verizon
victoria's secret
the dairy farmers of america
dickinson frozen foods
badlands quilting
pizza hut
hickman's egg ranch
fidelity investments
jc penny
american airlines
avis rental cars
the oregon department of motor vehicles
3M
allstate insurance
american apparel
american express
costco
enterprize
fedex
frito lay
hertz
HP
little caesars
kfc
office max
sara lee
xerox
and so many others.
The problem and practice is so pervasive it is honestly really difficult to boycott and divest from products produced by prison labor. Sometimes we can search and find out if a company uses prison labor, sometimes it just feels unknowable. Sometimes those companies are your only option for internet service.
Companies also love to market a product as "made in America" without clarifying it was made by prison labor. If something says it was made in America but gives zero further details, be very wary of it. Shit that is marketed towards a conservative audience absolutely loves to do this especially.
