Black History: Prison Labor

When Congress put inmate work programs in place in place in 1979, the goal was giving people in prison marketable skills to help them reintegrate into society. But as state governments also climbed on board with their own programs, and the private prison industry boomed, inmate work programs have turned into a massive supply of incredibly cheap and involuntary labor at one time or another in the last few years for everyone from Walmart to McDonald's to Victoria's Secret to the U.S. military. Even Whole Foods' cheese was produced by prison labor, until public outcry shut it down. There are more than 2.2 million people in the U.S. federal, state, and local prison systems. Most of them are required to work in some capacity, and can face consequences including solitary confinement if they don't. American jurisprudence has generally decided that these prisoners do not count as "employees" under such statutes as the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act, so they get no protection from those laws. Pay varies, but 12 to 40 cents an hour appears to be the norm in most federal prisons. In some places, the incarcerated workers aren't paid anything.