America's ever more flexible (incarcerated) workforce

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Tue Mar 28 16:12:17 PST 2000


Quote from the often pithy columnist George Szamuely in the current NY Press:

" ... [U.S.] prisoners today are increasingly a source of cheap labor. A number of states permit private companies to use convict labor. For the corporations this makes excellent sense: they don’t have to pay their prisoner-employees health insurance or unemployment insurance. They don’t have to worry about vacations or sick leave. If a prisoner is sick, he is immediately replaced. If a prisoner is released the prison finds a substitute. There are no unions to worry about. As for the non-incarcerated workers, they will just have to work harder for less pay so as to remain 'competitive.' American workers already have to compete against African and Asian sweatshops. Now they have domestic sweatshops to worry about. Prison labor is the Wall Street Journal dream come true: a flexible labor market. Hillary and her husband have happily presided over all of this. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why liberals like her so much."

Carl

______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list