Intro: Play Howard Zinn 28 seconds. Track 11 MAJ CD Body: Howard Zinn was recorded for the Mumia Abu Jamal All Things Censored CD. He is exactly right. Slavery was never abolished and it is alive and well today in Amerikan prisons. Prisoners have always done the bulk of the work of running the prisons as the wage-slaves of the government. Now the corporations are getting in on the act. And for those corporations behind the learning curve, we have the Wisconsin Department of Corrections trying to bring them up to speed with this ominous advertisement "Can't find workers? A willing work force awaits." The rapid expansion of prisoner labor is not an accident but a plan concocted at the top of the Amerikan government. Listen to what Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger had to say on the subject back in 1981: QUOTE What I propose is, that as we embark on this massive prison construction program, we try a new approach -- convert our "warehouses" into factories with fences around them. To do that we must change our thinking and change the reactionary statutes that stand in the way. I believe the American people are ready to do that. ENDQUOTE Since 1979, with the federal creation of Prison Industry Enhancement (PIE) regulations, corporations have been allowed into the prisons to exploit prisoner slave labor. These regulations, which include paying prisoners the prevailing wage must be met, before the products of prisoner labor can be sent across state lines. There is considerable effort underfoot to weaken these regulations, thereby making it possible for corporations to more easily exploit prisoner labor to make their products. Companies like Microsoft have used prisoners to package their products such as Microsoft Office.(1) Eddie Bauer makes jeans in a Tennessee prison, and that Honda makes car parts in an Ohio prison. All of these get to credit their labor as "made in the U$A."(2) State-owned industries get in on the act too. While the U.$. criticizes Chinese prison slave labor being used for export, the states of California and Oregon are in direct competition with China. The California DOC has a line of clothing designed for export to the Asian market. The "Prison Blues" brand of clothes, made by prisoners in the Oregon, boasted of projected export sales of $1.2million in 1994.(3) A minute ago, we stated that PIE requires prisoners to be paid prevailing wages for that work. But this doesnŐt mean that the prisoners actually get those wages. Often, the great majority of wages are deducted for various state programs including paying for the prison. In Washington state, 20% of wages are deducted for the "cost of corrections", 10% goes towards non-interest bearing mandatory savings, 5% for a "Victims Compensation Fund" and then federal tax, medicare tax and social security are deducted. Prisoners could then see a real wage of $1.80-$2.80 an hour. But it could be even less as the law allows up to 80% of the wage to be deducted.(4) But even in that case, 98cents an hour is more than prisoners can earn in non-PIE work, so these jobs are in high demand. And of course, prisoners often have to support themselves while they are in prison. Toiletries must be paid for, as must medical care. While paying prevailing wages might be an inconvenience to the corporations they make their money back in other ways. Corporations don't pay prevailing rents to the prison (in fact often free or $1/year like Exmark Corp. in Washington State)(4), and the prison provides services that the corporation would otherwise have to pay for, such as warehouse security and often supervising workers. This all ends up as more exploitation of prisoners and yet another government subsidy to the corporations. Amerikan weapons of mass destruction are made in prison The Federal Prison Industries, or UNICOR, manufactures equipment and supplies for the U.$. military. Entry level wages are 23cents and hour. The Federal Bureau of Prisons boasts that the slave labor of prisoners has and continues to make significant contributionst towards supplying the needs of the military. "UNICOR's military production ranges from TOW and other missile cables, munitions components, communciations equipment, bomb parts, engine overhauls, uniform sewing, etc." Twenty six percent of federal prisoners work in UNICOR. The two notorious supermaxes of the federal system -- Marion and Florence -- require work in UNICOR as a condition of transfer. While most UNICOR work is military related, all UNICOR work in these two dungeons of political repression is military related. The prison at Lexington, KY, made infamous by the video "Through the Wire" typically sells $12million in products to the military. What happens when workers are injured on the job? When workers outside of prison are injured on the job, they are ensured certain protections by law. In prison it's another matter altogether. Nancy, a prisoner at FCI Dublin, explains what happened to her when she was injured on the job in prison: [Track 8 November Coalition CD 2:42] 3-2-1 Nancy was recorded by the November Coalition for a CD entitled "Voices from the Drug War". Corporate advocates and some prison officials say that prison labor is good for prisoners, because it gives them experience they will need to get jobs on the outside. In one sense, RAIL could agree: like any disciplined labor system, it serves the ideological function of preparing workers for wage work in an alienating, hierarchical economy. If prisoners have not had proper "education" before going to jail teaching them how to be good workers, then the prison might play that role. And, they might even be better off for it when they get out than some other prisoners. But by the same logic, slaves in the old South who learned how to grow cotton might have made better sharecroppers than those who did not. Either way, first they were slaves, then they were sharecroppers. RAIL's criticism is of the system. If the system wanted people to get good jobs, they never would have made them penniless "criminals" in the first place. Furthermore, prison slave labor is not training for jobs on the outside: many of the jobs done by prisoners are done in only two places: prison and Third World sweatshops. From reviewing the economics, it appears to RAIL that prisoners in the wage-slave jobs have more to gain than those who don't get that work, at least in the narrow economic sense. However, refusing to work in these industries is an effective attack on the prison-slave system. As with all oppressive labor systems, refusing to work is the first tool of the rebel worker. The power of the prison strike has not escaped revolutionaries in prison, as mail to the Maoist Internationalist Movement reflects. One West Virginia prisoner wrote in 1996: "I have been seriously thinking of means to knock the prison industry off its foundation. And the only way I can see it, is for prisoners to quit working for UNICOR. This would have to be a plan implemented through out all the U.S. prisons. I'm sure that the results would be devastating to the prisons themselves in six months or less. "Prisoners would have to gradually quit the UNICOR. Unfortunately the ones who are paying for incarceration, assessment, FRP, etc., would be hit the worst. They could be subjected to segregation, put on refusal status, or face being shipped to another facility. But you could only do this with so many prisoners. Mass shipment to me is highly unlikely especially with the prison space growing more scarce each day. "The prisoner would also have to use a backup buddy system. The backup friend, if you can find someone you trust, would receive money on their account, small amounts, to buy for that friend his personal needs at the commissary. If a person tried to stock up on many items before quitting UNICOR, if that person was to be shipped, they would lose everything, since everything is now being shipped home to your family. We have been receiving many women from other institutions and their attempts to stock up on items and clothing has backfired. "I realize that this would cause a lot of hardship for people. But as I see it, it would be a temporary setback, for a short time, in comparison to the many years that many prisoners have received on petty drug charges. I feel strongly that this plan will work. We need to pull together and knock the wheels off and take the money out of this slave labor operation. Crack the foundation of the prison drug war. Quit UNICOR."(20) A member of the Texas Prisoners' Labor Union wrote in April: "The Texas Prisoners' Labor Union is established to provide inmate laborers with a social and political forum from which to promote principles of social justice in a manner consistent with human rights. "The Texas Penal Colony is one of the most expansive industries in the United States. However, while the populations have swelled to over capacity, the Texas Correctional Industries programs have not kept in step. As a result, basic concepts of imprisonment in Texas remain unchanged from the prior plantation dictates that induced slavery. Inmate laborers in Texas are wholly uncompensated for their work. Conditions remain barbaric in spite of twenty years of formal litigation, offering inmate laborers little hope for the future. "There are no effective programs which would allow for an environment wherein rehabilitation and productivity are synonymous. Therefore those of us who remain confined within the penal colony are doomed to remain chained to the revolving door that has long become the accepted policy of incarceration in Texas. Legislators are happy to accept this concept of incarceration as it provides Texans with an ever growing industry, which in turn provides the citizenry of Texas with jobs in various areas of corrections. "This insane policy must be stopped and it is up to us to stop it. We must bind together so as to form a political base (pause) from which we may collectively assert our human rights and negotiate collective bargaining for improved working and living conditions, (pause) wages and rehabilitative programs that will allow us to develop skills and habits which will lend to our once again entering society (pause) as responsible and productive citizens. Daily the current Texas government is stripping more and more away from us and will continue to do so until there is nothing left. Only WE can stop this onslaught against human rights and social justice. Only WE can help ourselves."(24) These prisoners show the way toward a new path for organized resistance to the system of prison slavery. We can work together on both sides of the prison walls to end this system of Amerikan slavery.Return to Under Lock and Key RAIL Radio Program page