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America is Built on Prison Labor // The Real News
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America Runs on Prison Labor: Why the Labor Movement Must Show Up Behind the Walls
America likes a bootstrap story—unless the boots come from behind bars. Our economy quietly depends on incarcerated people who work for pennies or nothing, maintaining facilities, producing goods, and providing services that lower state costs and enrich contractors. If the labor movement exists to defend workers, the obvious question is: why are prison workers mostly left out?
The Scale You Rarely See
Hundreds of thousands of people inside prisons and jails cook, clean, sew, launder, build furniture, maintain grounds, and in some places even fight wildfires. Pay often equals cents on the dollar, and sometimes zero. Those “savings” for governments and vendors come at the cost of dignity, economic mobility, and future earning power. When your first job after release has been paid next to nothing, the market brands you as permanently cheap labor.
The 13th Amendment’s Exception
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” That exception didn’t expire. It’s been a legal hinge for practices from post–Civil War convict leasing to modern compulsory work programs and trustee labor. When labor is coerced or effectively unpaid, you do not have a free labor market—you have a captive one that can be used to undercut wages elsewhere.
How Prison Labor Lowers Wages Outside
Cheap labor behind walls doesn’t stay there. It normalizes subminimum pay and creates supply chains that externalize costs. Employers and contracting agencies gain leverage to cut labor costs because a segment of the workforce is structurally cheapened. After release, people with records are funneled into temp, low-wage jobs regardless of skill—reinforcing a two-tier labor market that drags standards down for everyone.
Why Unions Should Care
Unions historically weakened employer leverage by organizing broadly. Ignoring incarcerated and formerly incarcerated workers cedes power to those who profit from a divided workforce. Organizing inside carceral settings is politically and logistically difficult, but solidarity is strategic: it prevents employers from using captive labor as strikebreaking or as a cost advantage that diminishes bargaining power for free workers.
Prison Resistance Is Labor History
Hunger strikes, work stoppages, and coordinated refusals in prisons are labor actions. From the Attica uprising to statewide prison strikes, incarcerated people have organized around wages, conditions, safety, and dignity—risking retaliation and isolation for collective gains. Treating these acts as anything other than labor history obscures lessons for external organizing and lets prison workplaces set the floor for labor expectations nationwide.
Five Practical Moves Toward Solidarity
1) Name it. Recognize prison labor as labor; language shapes policy.
2) Bargain upstream. Add anti-exploitation clauses to contracts and procurement policies to block prison-made inputs that undercut wages.
3) Build reentry pipelines. Create pre-release apprenticeships, portable credentials, and hiring halls that connect people to living-wage union jobs from day one out.
4) Push legal reform. Support state and federal efforts to eliminate forced labor exceptions and mandate fair pay and protections for incarcerated workers.
5) Educate and expand the story. Incorporate incarcerated workers’ struggles into labor training, school curricula, and public campaigns so organizers understand the full workforce.
Policy Steps That Move the Needle
Set minimum wages for prison labor; guarantee workplace-safety protections equivalent to OSHA; codify the right to organize without retaliation; prohibit deductions that zero out pay; provide workers’ compensation and unemployment eligibility where applicable; and ensure sentence-reduction incentives supplement, not replace, actual wages. Post-release, push record-sealing, enforce ban-the-box, and use procurement to favor fair-chance employers.
What Real Solidarity Looks Like
Real solidarity means unions partnering with reentry organizations and abolitionist groups, documenting prison-made goods in procurement, and refusing to launder exploitation through opaque vendor chains. It means shop stewards, students, and policymakers learning how carceral labor shapes local economies. Success is measured by wages paid, protections enforced, and pathways to union jobs for people leaving prison—not by symbolism.
America is built on prison labor, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. The labor movement strengthens itself by widening the circle of “us.” That circle must extend past gates and bars into every kitchen, laundry, workshop, farm, and fire line where people produce value. Solidarity that ends at the prison door isn’t solidarity—it’s a slogan. Real power bargains.
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