Above Photo: Activists rally against financial institutions’ support of private prisons and immigrant detention centers, as part of a May Day protest near Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, May 1, 2018, in New York City. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images).
Prisoners today are fighting the same labor conditions behind bars that birthed the union movement in the 19th Century.
An estimated two thirds of the more than one million prisoners in the United States today are incarcerated workers. With many prisoners earning less than a dollar an hour, and those who refuse to work often facing vicious retaliation in the form of punitive solitary confinement, labor exploitation is an important part of what makes life in American prisons so brutal. It’s little surprise that prisoners’ resistance often centers around the question of labor, as was seen during the nationwide 2017 prisoners’ strike. In spite of these realities, ‘labor issues’ and ‘prison issues’ are all too often presented as separate concerns. US labor journalist and Real News contributor Michael Sainato joins Rattling the Bars to discuss why the union movement today should see the prison struggle as an essential part of the fight for justice for all workers.
Michael Sainato is a journalist based in Gainesville, Florida, and a regular contributor to The Guardian and The Real News Network.