Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 789-791

Across America, people are dying for work. It's not because they're unemployed. It's because they work for corporations that don't care if they die.
X
...In 4,500 such instances each year, the worker's death is quick and the cause obvious. In many more cases, however, the deaths are slower, and the reason -- workplace exposure to toxic substances -- less evident. Workplace exposure causes more than 40,000 premature deaths annually from conditions like cancer and neurological disease.
Dying for Work
Leo W. Gerard
Huffpost Business
(emphasis JS)

As chief financial officer of a military clothing manufacturer, Steven W. Eisen was accustomed to winning contracts to make garments for the Defense Department. But in December, Mr. Eisen received surprising news. His company, Tennier Industries, which is in a depressed corner of Tennessee, would not receive a new $45 million contract.

Tennier lost the deal not to a private sector competitor, but to a corporation owned by the federal government, Federal Prison Industries.

Federal Prison Industries, also known as Unicor, does not have to worry much about its overhead. It uses prisoners for labor, paying them 23 cents to $1.15 an hour. Although the company is not allowed to sell to the private sector, the law generally requires federal agencies to buy its products, even if they are not the cheapest.

Mr. Eisen, who laid off about 100 workers after losing out on the new contract, said the system took sorely needed jobs from law-abiding citizens. “Our government screams, howls and yells how the rest of the world is using prisoners or slave labor to manufacture items, and here we take the items right out of the mouths of people who need it,” he said.
Private Businesses Fight Federal Prisons for Contracts
By DIANE CARDWELL
New York Times
Published: March 14, 2012

 If we look closely enough, we’ll have to conclude that poverty is not, after all, a cultural aberration or a character flaw. Poverty is a shortage of money.

Barbara Ehrenreich
How I Discovered the Truth About Poverty