The UK right seems to be trying to recreate an economy and economic inequality modeled on that of the United States. That desire would have been a big motivation for Brexit, since you’d have to get out of the EU rules to be able to do a lot of what we do to workers.
I think there is definitely a group of big businesses that would love to erode worker rights and protections.
Oddly, brexit and corona together have created a worker shortage, so that isn’t working out too well for them.
At least there is still adequate food.
Soylent Green is almost always available.
The problem with that tweet, and fucking twitter in general, is that it’s a cropped image cherry picking a snarky hot take on something entirely free of the burden of actual context. Context in this case being the body of the full article, notably lacking as an actual link in said tweet (always a red flag), and which is located right here.
To fill vacancies companies are trying to draft in prisoners via a scheme that allows inmates to undertake paid work on day release.
Paid work on day release. So, no, not exactly ‘slave labour’. Perhaps it could even be regarded as something of a progressive scheme…
KevinC
9178
Thanks for the context! How does this work in the UK, would they be paid like actual employees or is it similar to the US where they get paid in pennies for work?
CraigM
9179
This.
Plus, as we’ve seen in the US, such schemes can create perverse incentives. With those who benefit from such work programs (due to getting $X labor at $X/10 price) giving kickbacks and compensation to judges and sherrifs for incarcerating more people thus increasing their below minimum wage work force at the for profit prisons.
wavey
9180
They’re paid the going rate for the job. From here:
However, prisoners who work for outside employers, doing a normal job (that is, one which cannot be defined as voluntary or charitable work) must be paid the appropriate rate for the job at or above the National Minimum Wage. Where prisoners work for less than the normal working week, they will be paid pro rata. It is Prison Service policy that working out arrangements must not give an unfair competitive advantage to those who employ prisoners and that prisoners must not be treated less favourably than other workers in comparable employment
KevinC
9181
Thanks! Some days I think about how nice it would be to live in a first world civilized nation.
I mean, once you taste the slave labor high, you can’t quite kick the habit, can you?
They get paid the going rate for the job, which, in this case, is a job that apparently no non-prisoners want to do at that going rate.
No, not exactly. How about ‘conscripted labor’?
This is certainly possible.
In the US prisoners theoretically cannot be forced to work in a “prison job”, and there are laws and regulations to try and make the traditional “chain gang” convict forced-labor situations a thing of the past. In the best cases, you have inmates competing for prison jobs, which are only awarded to model prisoners. So you get situations like the wildfire-fighting prisoners out West where serving on the firefighting teams gets you time away from the Yard and also gets you favorable treatment on your parole boards.
And – in theory – some of these jobs provide the inmates some level of training and experience that would serve the prisoner well upon their release (though it doesn’t sound like the UK jobs would fall into that category).
Of course, ALL of these situations are dripping with the potential for abuse.
jpinard
9185
In the U.S. they’re often paid a laughable amount, like $1.00 per hour, if at all.
B Johnson floated the idea of UK chain gangs quite recently.
One of the responses was from this guy who employs former prisoners.
It’s voluntary, unlike conscription. Guess that just leaves us with ‘labour’*.
The pay isn’t great for the UK scheme either, and I’m not going to argue that it’s some perfect scheme free from any form of abuse. But; they’re prisoners with bread and board paid for and the point of the scheme isn’t so much ‘get rich quick from gaol’ but more aimed at getting people close to release set up with experience and hopefully even an actual job when they leave.
There are enough reasons to dunk on brexit idiocy without shitting over something that at least is trying to get people’s lives back on track. There are no easy answers in dealing with people serving time but schemes like this take soooo much flak from right wing ‘throw away the key’ types it just… saddens me to see ‘progressive’ people do the same from the opposite direction. I appreciate Americans will be jaded by the (many) abuses of their domestic prison industrial complex but, well, we ain’t there. Yet.
By all means make up your own mind on it though. The government propaganda page for it is here Employing prisoners and ex-offenders - GOV.UK.
* This is the brexit thread. Extra u’s are mandatoury.
I’m not complaining about the value proposition for the prisoners. I’m complaining about the bad, abusive labor practices and expectations of the employers. I would have thought that was obvious.
You need to demonstrate that this is actually the current or developing trend for the UK scheme, rather than projection based on your perceptions of the US (I assume).
Sure, we need to be vigilant now that brexit has freed us from the terrifying shackles of EU imposed worker’s rights, but we’re not quite at the level of indentured servitude you’re implying.
This isn’t a package deal where people are just shipped out by the warden somewhere with no recourse. They have rights. They choose to work and who to work for. Interviews and everything! Given the immense staff shortages, seems to me that prisoners could and would have the pick of the crop in terms of who they work for, too. Shit on them too much and word on the yard will get around quick I’d imagine… Why suffer for BadCo when OkCo is as desperate?
No, i don’t. I just need to point at the employers who are clamoring for greater access to prisoner labor at low wages instead of raising wages enough to attract free workers.
You seem to think I’m attacking the scheme. Maybe that’s my fault, and if so I’m sorry. To be clear, I’m talking about the employers trying to take advantage of that scheme.
CraigM
9191
The problem is twofold:
We have clear examples on how such schemes can, and have been, abused in the past (and currently) via things like various US state programs
We also see a clear trend in how the UK government under Johnson approaches labor issues, which frequently involves a push to curtail worker rights or anti free market approaches that create artificial advantages for big companies over workers
I view things through the lens of incentives. What incentives does a system put in place? What outcomes does that lead to? What does a change do to existing incentive structures?
With prison labor there are multiple incentives at play. How they look in the UK today may very well be different and non exploitative, I wouldn’t know as it is not a topic I have devoted any time to in the past. However I do tend to be cautions with the type of change that is being proposed, because I can see a very clear line of change to some very bad incentives.
In the US it exists with a very strong set of perverse incentives built in. For various reasons prison labor is not compensated at full market value. (the call out @jpinard had earlier about people not wanting to do jobs at the wages offered means that the wages offered are de facto not the market rate is a valid one). With prison labor being cheaper, often very sub minimum wage, it incentivizes companies to use prison labor to cut costs. This in turn incentivizes other companies to adopt the model. Which creates greater demand. Now this would cause one of two things, an increase in the price of prison labor, or a need to secure a greater supply. In many places companies push for the latter, as various corruption schemes in states with for profit prisons (Pennsylvania was noted above, but Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Alabama and others have all been caught with similar) push police and judges to push harsher penalties and greater criminalization for nuisance laws in order to increase the incarcerated populations at for profit prisons.
The incentives in expanding prison labor creates huge moral hazards and potential for perverse incentives. That isn’t to say such a program can’t exist, and that it can’t provide benefit, but to indicate it is something that needs to be approached very carefully and with these incentives in mind.
And given what I know of the Johnson government, pardon me for being very skeptical of the true reasons and outcomes of this proposal.
A jobs program for people that are almost out of prison sounds great.
Using prisoners to make up for the fact that there’s a labor shortage and you can’t get enough people to do job y because you’re not paying enough sounds like the first step on a really shitty path.
I don’t know enough about the situation in the UK to know which one is it.
