Posted on 06/10/2015 11:58:39 AM PDT by george76
One of the largest companies to manufacture solar panels in the United States uses a surprising resource to keep costs low and compete against producers from China: prison labor.
Suniva Inc, a Georgia-based solar cell and panel maker that is backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc, farms out a small portion of its manufacturing to federal inmates as part of a longstanding government program intended to prepare them for life after prison.
Suniva does not actively publicize its work with the prisons, saying it prefers to talk about its in-house factories in Georgia and Michigan, which handle most of its production and
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By making panels in the United States, Suniva has been able to capture lucrative federal contracts, avoid U.S. government tariffs on Chinese-made panels, and appeal to private sector customers who want American-made products. The company is the third-biggest producer of solar modules that are made in the United States
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About 200 inmates make solar panels working in factories at prisons in Sheridan, Oregon and Otisville, New York
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While the private company doesn't disclose its financials, a federal contract from 2014 said Suniva had $93 million in annual revenue.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
GOOD. All prisoners should be made to work. That they learn a trade is even better.
Are they paid $15 an hour?
They will be replaced by prisoners from India or China sooner or later.
Wait until the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Solar Panel Workers Local #262 hears about this...
“GOOD. All prisoners should be made to work. That they learn a trade is even better.”
There are a couple of problems with that. Florida Prison Industries runs a program teaching manufacturing skills to prisoners. But their near zero labor cost items compete with those produced by other American labor. To minimize impact they developed rules. I don’t recall them all but a few were they could only sell to governmental bodies. They could not consume more than x% of the marketplace. Among other things this was to ensure that the government didn’t create huge enterprises to enrich government at the expense of American labor. It seems that this program is using what the Chinese would call American slave labor to compete against their supposedly free laborers. (If you can’t leave a job without permission you are a slave. But governments routinely mislabel things like labor to comply with our many trade agreements.) It also is likely that this particular enterprise is in violation of the GATT and other treaties.
It is a very dangerous thing to develop what amounts to a slave labor force. Yes, they pay them some token amount, but that is usually taken away as fees somewhere else. Slaves are slaves whether ours or Chinese.
It just writes itself, Welcome to Neo-Feudalism.
That’s great. Since the US has the highest per capita prison population in the world by far, it’s good to see the US government making efforts at increasing the domestic work force.
I also like the fact that this work is being sponsored by ethical firms like Goldman Sachs. Hopefully in the future, we can get some Chinese billionaires to invest in these prison companies and employing American prison labor.
Now with TPP and TPA we will have more than enough laws on the books to get anyone in the prison system that we want.
Land of the free labor. Aint America great!
Synergy. The leftist goals of more laws, more prisons, less actual paying jobs, and cheap solar panels all swirl nicely into a uncharacteristically coherent plan.
And once robots can do most of the work, you’ll already have the “useless eaters” behind barbed wire for easy roundup
The useless eaters will still be going to the Walmart. However, the new Walmarts will be converted into “labor centers”
Arbeit mach freiheit.
The Left’s fictional hero on this is Dr. Floyd Ferris (Atlas Shrugged).
Let me see. Inmates do work in exhange for housing and food (the prisons). They also get free medical care, etc. Inmates are predominantly black.
Gee, sounds like a plantation.
and when they’re ready to drop dead on the production line, do they harvest the organs too?
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