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Essay On Prison Labour In Prison

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The military, interlinked with the police and prisons, is one of the few forces with a stronghold on the United States capitalist economy and control of political power. At the heart is the United States Department of Defense, or The Pentagon. It oversees agencies and components concerning national security and the United States Armed Forces.
In 2011, the Pentagon was linked to the misconduct in the use of prison labours in manufacturing military products and weapons, where a large of them were to be sold to other countries. Labour in federal prisons was contracted out by UNICOR, previously known as Federal Prison Industries, a for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. Majority of UNICOR’s products and services were on contract …show more content…

The industry, along with many other sectors including defence, has been quietly outsourcing the production site overseas, where the labour market is a lot cheaper. Seeking for an even more drastic cut in workers’ wages, prison labour later became a more attractive option for outsourcing domestically.
Prison labour with no union protection, overtime regulations, day-offs, pensions, health and safety protection, and other benefits a normal employee is entitled of could be paid as low as 23 cents an hour in US federal prisons . These were some of the lowest labour pay rate in the world, while the finished products were sold at the highest rates of profit. However, dividends to only a handful of CEO and top stockholders at top military corporations actually surpassed the total wages being paid to the more than 23,000 imprisoned workers who produced UNICOR products.
Pay far below the standard was not the only problem. Oftentimes, the prison work was dangerous and toxic. At FCC Victorville, a federal prison located at an old U.S. airbase, prisoners cleaned, repaired and reassembled tanks and military vehicles returned from battle and layered in toxic used up ammunition, depleted uranium dust and chemicals. Prisoners there worked covered in dust, without safety equipment, protective gear, air filtration or

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