The Prisoners of War

By Ian Urbina, AlterNet. Posted October 27, 2003.

On April 16, 2003, George W. Bush visited the shop floor at the Boeing plant in St. Louis, Missouri. His 90-minute appearance drew several hundred men and women who help make the military's $48 million F-18 Hornet fighters, 36 of which were deployed during the Iraq war. The purpose of Bush's visit was twofold: to offer thanks to the blue-collar workers equipping US soldiers for their foreign adventures and to provide reassurance in an atmosphere of climbing unemployment.

One week prior to Bush's visit, the St. Louis plant announced layoffs for about 250 people. Already in 2003, Boeing had eliminated 5,000 positions nationwide, in addition to the 30,000 jobs the company cut in 2002. Bush's so-called "Hardware in the Heartland" tour, which included stops across the industrial Midwest, was part of a post-war campaign strategy to capitalize on the US military prowess demonstrated in Iraq. "Sure, he talked about his domestic agenda," a White House official told Time magazine concerning the Boeing appearance, "but there were F-18s in the background."

But the "Hardware in the Heartland" tour skipped a number of locales where thousands of hard-working men and women were contributing more than their share to the war effort. While the Boeing employees sat listening to Bush's remarks, just 50 miles to the northeast 265 workers in the apparel factory in Greenville, Illinois were far from idle. Averaging more than 1,000 desert-tan camouflage shirts per day, 194,950 of which were bought in 2002 by the Department of Defense and worn by the US infantry in the Middle East, these workers were not allowed many breaks. Equally harried were the 300 workers at the Kevlar helmet factory in Beaumont, Texas, who fill 100 percent of the US military's demand for battlefield headgear. A factory in Marion, Illinois also kept in rapid motion, soldering millions of dollars worth of cables for the Pentagon's TOW and Patriot missiles. Presidential plaudits were not forthcoming for these workers -- all of whom are inmates in federal prisons.

Captive Labor Force

Were it not for this captive labor force, the military could hardly meet needs ranging from weapons production and apparel manufacture to transportation servicing and communications infrastructure. US soldiers are well-equipped with guns to fire, clothes to wear, vehicles to drive, radios to call and maps to help them navigate, thanks in large measure to the 21,000 inmates working for Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 2002, the company sold $678.7 million worth of goods and services to the US government, over $400 million of which went to the Department of Defense.

Government reliance upon prison inmates for war production is hardly new. Founded in 1934, Federal Prison Industries, also known as UNICOR, started lending a hand in WWII, as prison factories ran two and three shifts per day for military manufacturing, increasing output threefold before the armistice was declared. In four years, FPI produced more than $75 million worth of everything from aircraft to dynamite cases, parachutes, cargo nets and tents, all for shipment to troops in the European and Pacific theaters. As early as May 1941, the Atlanta federal penitentiary alone was producing eight to ten train carloads of war materiel per day. During the Korean War, 80 percent of FPI output went to defense, with sales reaching over $29 million, and the number of inmates employed by the corporation topped an unprecedented 3,800. More recently, FPI has been no less vital. During the 1990-91 Persian Gulf conflict, inmates produced belts, camouflage battle-dress uniforms, lighting systems, sandbags, blankets, night vision eyewear, chemical gas detection devices and bomb components. Even after the September 11 attacks, inmates took a role in relief work; their labor supplying virtually all the protective goggles worn by recovery staff at the New York and Pentagon sites.

No Ordinary Contractor

Over the years, FPI has grown exponentially, now ranking as the government's thirty-ninth largest contractor -- in no small part due to the quantity and diversity of apparel items it manufactures for the Department of Defense. The company has churned out more than 150,000 Kevlar helmets in the past 24 months, more than $12 million worth. Aside from the battle-dress shirts sewn at Greenville, the company is also a major supplier of men's military undershirts, $1.6 million of which it sold to the Pentagon in 2002. In that year, FPI made close to $3 million fashioning underwear and nightwear for the troops. Inmates also stitch together the vestments donned by military pastors and the gowns cloaking battlefield surgeons. If an item of clothing is torn in combat, it will likely be sent to the prison shop in Edgefield, South Carolina, where it is mended at a cost of $5 per shirt and or pair of trousers. In 2002, 700 prisoners based at FPI laundry facilities located in Florida, Texas and Alabama washed and pressed $3 million worth of military apparel.

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