“Add One Million American Jobs by Abolishing Prison Corporations,” by Shakaboona. UNICOR is the Manufacturing Corporation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which operate manufacturing plants at nearly each of its federal prisons and manufacturing commodities like clothing, furniture, office supplies, military equipment, car parts and more. UNICOR’s manufacturing operations are based upon exploitative slave-like penal labor relations with incarcerated inmates, in which incarcerated American citizens are paid Third World slave wages of 18 cents an hour, for manufacturing jobs that American workers and society are paid $20 an hour to do.
UNICOR provides nearly 400,000 manufacturing jobs to prisoners. Throughout America’s 50 states, each state’s Department of Corrections operate their own version of UNICOR and provides about 500,000 manufacturing jobs to prisoners. Between the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the state’s Department of Corrections, there are approximately one million manufacturing jobs that goes to prisoners and that could go to American workers in the private sector.
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections operates its prison corporation called PENCOR, which runs about 15 manufacturing plants in its prisons, and provides about 10,000 jobs to prisoners at a pay rate of 18 cent an hour that could go to unemployed Pennsylvania workers in the state. The irony of it all is that these same skilled prisoners are released from prison and then are unable to get the same manufacturing jobs they were doing while in prison.
America’s current unemployment rate is 5% nationwide. The President of the United States or the Congress can easily add one million American manufacturing jobs to the private sector to reduce unemployment in America by abolishing prison corporations. From the belly of the beast at Prison Radio, I am Shakaboona. Thank you for listening.
Mumia Abu-Jamal 2:06
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
