This information wasgained from
The Independent
This cry
for austerity as a deficit reduction plan is a wonderful excuse for
employers to squeeze wages. Unemployment rising and wage
freezes/cuts, it's bonanza time for the corporate world as they tell
the workers to like it or lump it. While they are forcing down wages
and ripping up contracts on conditions, the Justice Secretary Kenneth
Clarke is opening up new avenues of exploitation to help their profit
margins. He has plans to increase to 20,000 the number of prisoners
doing cheap labour in prisons. He wants to turn the prisons into
profit making machines before handing them over to the private sector
to be milked.
Under this scheme prisoners wages are approximately £2 per hour, of
course the prisoners don't get the full £2, as the prisons take
variable amounts from that. It is obvious that companies will
increasingly out-source their work to the prison service via a new
company, One3One. One of the companies taking advantage of the
captive slave labour facilities offered by One3One, is Speedy Hire a
tool hiring company which in 2010 closed 75 of its repair depots,
paying off 800 staff. The company increased its prison contract by
approximately 10%, using almost 100 prisoners and handing, during the
financial year 2010-2011, £114,012 to Pentoville, Garth and
Erlestoke prisons. Approximately 800 more people looking for work in
that area while the company rips-off approximately 100 prisoner who
have little or no say in the matter. Another company that has grabbed
at the cheap labour in prisons is Calpac, a food packaging firm. Its
contract with Kirkham prison has increased from £34,321 in 2010 to
£154,267. according to the company pay roll the highest paid job was
office manager on £40 for a 40 hour week, while a manual packing
operative would be paid 55p an hour. Many of the workers work
overtime taking their working week to 60 hours. With pay and
conditions like this we can expect to see many more firms pay-off
hard working people on the outside to employ more cheap trapped
labour on the inside. All with the governments blessing, this is how
a capitalist government helps the economy.
ann arky's home.
