How Modern-Day Slavery Aids Big Businesses Like McDonald’s and Wendy’s
Photo by John Moore/Getty Images
One of America’s many enduring myths is that we abolished slavery. Not only were we one of the last western countries to address this universal societal evil that rose in tandem with global capitalism, but we included a loophole in our “abolition” so large you can drive 20 percent of the globe’s prison population through it. Just read the 13th Amendment and you’ll see the farcical notion that we completely abolished slavery in America (emphasis mine):
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Which brings us to Alabama as one example of the sick and twisted notion of an “incarcerated worker.” The state of Alabama, like many others, sends prisoners to work for major companies like McDonald’s and Wendy’s, with the state taking almost half of their wages. Ten current and former Alabama prisoners filed a lawsuit in December of last year alleging that the state forces them to participate in work programs and threatens them with solitary confinement or violations of their parole if they refuse, all while the state took in $450 million for “leased” incarcerated labor.
Watch this More Perfect Union video to see the full depravity of this scheme on display.
NEW: Alabama is farming out incarcerated people to work at hundreds of companies, including McDonald’s & Wendy’s.
The state takes 40% of wages and often denies parole to keep people as cheap labor.
Getting written up can lead to solitary confinement. This is modern day slavery. pic.twitter.com/A7TxkpCkAC
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) September 3, 2024
Walk Free, an international human rights group focused on the eradication of modern slavery, estimates that there are just under 1.1 million people living in modern slavery in the United States right now, accounting for one-fifth of all people in modern slavery across the Americas. The ACLU found that incarcerated workers generate over $2 billion in goods per year and more than $9 billion worth of prison maintenance services but are paid an average of between 13 and 52 cents an hour, with some states’ averages literally netting out to zero—AKA slavery. As the ACLU notes, even prisoners who do get wages do not get to keep most of them, as “the government takes up to 80 percent of these wages for ‘room and board,’ court costs, restitution, and other fees like building and sustaining prisons.”
The United States comprises just five percent of the world’s population but over 20 percent of its prison population. Given how often major companies find themselves “employing” American prison labor at extreme discounts, it is difficult to argue that the rise of the prison industrial complex is anything but a direct response to the massive loophole written into the 13th Amendment.
America never banned slavery, we just moved it out of the public’s view.
The Union of Southern Service Workers has a petition demanding that America stand up for its stated ideals and actually abolish slavery, and you can sign it here to help them try to lobby this moral depravity off of state’s balance sheets. If anything has been made obvious under the rise of global capitalism, it’s that left to its own devices, it will find the cheapest labor possible in its insatiable march for perpetual profits. It’s on the rest of us to try to stop this system from doing what it is designed to do.