Slaves.

   

            One subject that gets practically no mention by our media or by our political ballerinas, is prison labour. The UK has the most privatised prison system in Europe. Companies make a fortune from incarcerating our citizens, and not content with that, they use the imprisoned population as cheap labour. Those capitive in this slave labour institution are obliged to work and at a particular rate or they can lose "privileges". They have no contract, no sick leave pay, no holiday pay, no opportunity to negotiate their conditions and are paid a pittance while the companies that use them make a killing in profits from this trapped labour force. There is also the view that this cheap labour source takes jobs away from those outside, who would need to be paid at least the minimum wage plus the few other beneficial conditions that the workers have wrestled from the employers.
        We can't in all honesty state that we are a civilised society, when we allow slave labour to flourish for the benefit of companies and large corporations. We can't in all honesty state we live in a democracy when a whole swath of our people have no say or control over their wages or working conditions. Prison labour is an abomination, a blight on our society, an anathema to democracy and freedom. However it is all part and parcel of a society that functions only for profit, a system designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many. Those who worship at the altar of capitalism will see nothing wrong in captivated prison slave labour, it is an efficient way of creating wealth for that privileged few. 

The following figures are from an IWW article in 2016.

 

One3One Solutions is the trading arm of the Ministry of Justice founded in 2012. Over 9,700 prisoners were employed in their profit-making partnerships with private companies, with a total of 13.1 million prisoner working hours being recorded (1). Private sector prisons (those run for-profit) reported that they delivered over 1.5 million prisoner working hours involving over 1,200 prisoners in 2012/13. (1) Prisoners working full time at a minimum will receive £4 a week. Prisoners working in workshops run by private companies may earn up to £25 per week if they are lucky. The average pay if you are a wing cleaner or gardener is about £6-7. Rates of pay are set out in the Prison Service Order 4460 (2). If prisoners are sick on the short-term they may get £2.50 a week. For prisoners that simply cannot work because they are ill long-term or old, they receive £3.25 a week. Likewise, Asylum Seekers in Detention Centres (that are all run for profit), are paid at the very most £1.25 per hour(3).

         The long list of companies that use prison slave labour reads like a role of honour in the world of exploitative capitalism. 

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Forced Labour Is Fascism.

       What is happening in this country is no longer about party politics, it's about fascist forced labour, it's about ordinary people being forced to fatten the bank accounts of greedy shareholders, being forced to swell the profits of rich corporate giants, all for no wages. Thousands of people are, at this moment in time, working for prosperous corporations and so called charities and receiving no wages while failing to turn up can see your benefits sanctioned. There has already been one case where a homeless man failed to turn up on his workfare scheme, on two separate days and was fined in court, the sum of £250. Is prison the next step to force you to work for nothing? Where does this stop, it wont, until we stop it, by mass protests, by boycotting those greed merchants that are exploiting this situation, by changing the system to one that sees to the needs of all our people, and gets the millionaire parasites off our backs. What do you call a country that forces people to work for rich companies, for nothing, a democracy???? 

This from The Void:

Exploit us and we will shut you down.

      In April George Osborne’s mass workfare scheme will begin.  Unemployed people will be sentenced to 780 hours community work simply for being unable to find a job. Not even lone parents with young children are to be exempt from the scheme which will see so-called charities like Groundwork UK and the Salvation Army paid by the tax payer to force people to work for free.  Part time workers and those currently genuinely volunteering will also face being sent on unpaid work.

      Collective action can halt this forced labour scheme in its tracks.  A week of action against workfare has been called beginning on the 29th March.  An escalation in the campaign against unpaid work is vital and there is no better chance than this.  It only takes a few people to get the ball rolling, and protests against organisations using workfare have proved to be effective.  Boycott Workfare can offer support with publicity, leaflets and advice. Please help spread the word about the week of action and let’s make this the strongest stand against people being forced to work for free that has been seen so far.

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The Osborne Workfare Regiment.

        Come April next year there will be a new slave army in town, the Osborne Workfare Regiment. This will not be a volunteer army, it will a conscripted force. Thousands of mainly young people, but not necessarily so, will be conscripted, not to fight on foreign soil to secure and increase, our corporate masters oil assets, but here at home to boost the coffers of the corporate greed machine. These unemployed conscripts will be forced to do six months under the command of an over paid parasitic CEO. They will be posted to various organisations under the misnamed, operation, “Community Work Placements”. What ever it says on the the packet, this is not volunteering, it is conscription, under the threat of acute deprivation, destitution and homelessness. Being forced to work for six months without wages, is nothing short of forced slavery, no matter where that “placement” happens to land you. Osborne and his millionaire, Eton educated cabal, should look up the word “volunteering” in a dictionary. Of course they don't need to, they know full well the meaning of the word, and they know full well that what they are doing is forced labour. But it all goes to helping their millionaire corporate buddies to keep down wages and has the side effect of lowering the unemployment figures. This in turn will allow them to spout their usual delusional crap about growth.

This from The Void:

       “There has been a lot of talk recently about the latest scheme to help people who are unemployed, with mention of “compulsory volunteering” as part of the “Help to Work” programme.  DWP do not refer to it as volunteering, but others are starting to, which is muddying the waters.  These “Community Work Placements” are NOT volunteering, as people are not freely choosing to participate in them, but rather will be faced with benefits sanctions if they do not engage in the compulsory placements.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

WORK IS THE ANTITHESIS OF FREEDOM.

      In Britain at the end of the first world war, in 1919, there were strikes and mass protests/demonstrations calling for an eight hour day, some of them very bloody. If we believe that we live in a society that is meant to be progressing, one would imagine that almost 100 years after those strikes/protests/demonstrations, we would have made progress to the three hour day, or there abouts, at least. But no, here we are still stuck with the eight and eight plus hour day. Work can never be freedom, freedom can only take place outside of work, so it is safe to say that in this society, freedom of the individual has not progressed in almost 100 years. That is surely an indictment of the type of society we have created.

An interesting article from Anarchy in Italy:

      Work less to live more. What a beautiful slogan! I wonder if the one who coined it understood the unintended truth it contains, that work is the negation of life. “Eight hours of obligation is enough to exhaust a person’s energy. What he gives at work is his life, the better part of her strength. Even if the work has not degraded her, even if she has not felt himself overcome by boredom and fatigue, he leaves exhausted, diminished, with the imagination withered.” So a worker wrote several decades ago. Anyone who has worked even for just one day understands the meaning of these words. This is why the reduction of work hours has always been one of the primary demands of those who don’t commission the work, but who carry it out, and so bear its entire burden.

      It is taken for granted that less time spent at work means more time dedicated to oneself, and thus that every minute, every hour snatched from the factory or office could only represent a step forward toward a better quality of life. Most likely no one would venture to deny it once someone says it. But we shouldn’t ignore the contradictions to be found in such a conviction. If one wants to work less, it is clearly because one does not love work. But why? If work gave satisfaction, joy, contentment, why would one every renounce it? If work was really the dimension through which the human being creates the world and himself, why does she feel it as a burden? If it is true that work is human nobility, why hope that a stroke of fortune will free us from it forever? Clearly because work does not exalt the human being at all, but rather degrades her. Life is the consumption of vital human energy, but through work this squandering of energy occurs at times, in places, in ways and for aims that are not those of the person working. When one works, it is always for someone else. So by detesting imposition, one ends up detesting work.

Read the full article HERE:

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MODERN SLAVERY.

        Where have the slaves gone? We used to speak of wage slaves but that seems to be out of fashion, but we are still in that position, modern slavery exits as a way of life across the planet, but we slaves are brainwashed into believing that slavery has been abolished, it is an illusion.. A quote from an interesting article on Modern Slavery:

Read the full article HERE:

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