Forget Sending Jobs Overseas, Plenty of Cheap Labor Right Here at Home!

[LAGC]

Inside the secret industry of inmate-staffed call centers

When you call a company or government agency for help, there's a good chance the person on the other end of the line is a prison inmate.

The federal government calls it "the best-kept secret in outsourcing" — providing inmates to staff call centers and other services in both the private and public sectors.

The U.S. government, through a 75-year-old program called Federal Prison Industries, makes about $750 million a year providing prison labor, federal records show. The great majority of those contracts are with other federal agencies for services as diverse as laundry, construction, data conversion and manufacture of emergency equipment.

But the program also markets itself to businesses under a different name, Unicor, providing commercial market and product-related services. Unicor made about $10 million from "other agencies and customers" in the first six months of fiscal year 2011 (the most recent period for which official figures are available), according to an msnbc.com analysis of its sales records.
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For inmates, the appeal isn't the pay, which can be as low as 50 cents an hour. It's the training and the opportunity: "A lot of times, we need to feel like we are appreciated, and it builds self-esteem," John Howard of Brooklyn, N.Y., an inmate at Greene, told WNYT.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20...d-call-centers

Business owners, are you tired of paying that burdensome minimum wage? Sick of your employees organizing and forming labor unions for better working conditions and more benefits eating into your profit margins? No problemo!

Why pay some foreigner or illegal immigrant $2/hour tax-free under the table, when there's plenty of SLAVE LABORERS right here at home available for just pennies on the dollar?!

What could possibly go wrong with this future American economic model?



No jobs for law-abiding citizens? No problem! Just pass a bunch more bullshit laws and lock those formerly law-abiding people up for a long time over petty shit. Viola! Eager and willing labor pool at your disposal. Any employee complaints, and its off to solitary with them! Couldn't ask for a more obedient labor force.

Prison fucking planet. Welcome to the New World Order.

[ATAK, Inc.]

Do you really think it's mandatory for all inmates? Many are not elegible and many don't care, but there are those who want to actually reform.

How many jobs does this represent? Can't be in the millions, more like 10k's.

You really need to double the dose!

[mriddick]

I would go along with no prison work like this, I would also go along with no privatization of prisons either. However the prison I would make would probably not be to your liking either. I think they ought to just a small room a prisoner is kept in for his sentence, no work time, no exercise time, just a room and little else. I'd supply with all the self help motivational books they would care to read and that would be about it. I would go back the idea of prisons being a time for quiet reflection of one's actions and self improvement.

[LAGC]

Do you really think it's mandatory for all inmates? Many are not elegible and many don't care, but there are those who want to actually reform.

How many jobs does this represent? Can't be in the millions, more like 10k's.

You really need to double the dose!

If you don't think that cheap prison labor is competing with and undermining local small business, I'll have some of what you're having.

Truth is, this "economic model" (if you can call it that) is driving down wages and stealing private-sector jobs. And its only going to get worse as we continue our Race to the Bottom, destroying what's left of the middle-class in this country.

[ATAK, Inc.]

If you don't think that cheap prison labor is competing with and undermining local small business, I'll have some of what you're having.

Truth is, this "economic model" (if you can call it that) is driving down wages and stealing private-sector jobs. And its only going to get worse as we continue our Race to the Bottom, destroying what's left of the middle-class in this country.

I may be wrong, but I thought any prison inmate worker cannot be in contact with the outside population. This article is talking about call centers, not really competing with local business, and if it weren't for the prison, that call center would not be located in that local economy.

[LAGC]

I may be wrong, but I thought any prison inmate worker cannot be in contact with the outside population. This article is talking about call centers, not really competing with local business, and if it weren't for the prison, that call center would not be located in that local economy.

Nope, in minimum security facilities inmates are often allowed to work off-site in the community, so long as they are supervised.

In fact, there's been talk of replacing fire-fighters en masse, "streamlining" departments so that just one civilian supervisor watches over an entirely inmate crew of workers. Those are some good paying union jobs that are going to be destroyed and replaced with slave labor. (Of course, that's public sector jobs being lost, so who cares, right?)

As far a call centers go, many companies are looking to bring back out-sourced tech support and what not from overseas because of so many customer complaints of them not being able to speak clear English, and these prison call center shops will directly steal jobs that might otherwise go to law-abiding American workers on the outs.

[Warthogg]

The federal government calls it "the best-kept secret in outsourcing" — providing inmates to staff call centers and other services in both the private and public sectors.

But they stressed that callers are protected — no personal information is displayed to the prisoners, who don't have access to computers, officials said.

Let's see the inmates staff call centers but have no access to computers. Right ??


Wart