Today In Labor History April 8, 1864: The 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, banning chattel slavery. However, it permitted a continuation of wage slavery, and the forced labor of convicts without pay, labor rights, or the right to unionize. And on this date in 1911, 128 convict miners, mostly African-Americans jailed for minor offenses, were killed by a massive explosion at the Banner coalmine near Birmingham, Alabama. While the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which occurred just two weeks earlier, elicited massive public attention and support for the plight of immigrant women working in sweatshop conditions, the Banner explosion garnered almost no public sympathy, probably due to racism and the fact that they were prisoners.

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"Prisoners in Minnesota are earning less than a dollar an hour making products for Disney. That’s according to organizers and former inmates who gathered at a press conference in December to share what they’ve learned — or experienced firsthand — about the exploitative prison labor system in Minnesota.

Organizers with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee called the press conference last month to update the public about their campaign to end what they call prison slavery.

The Minnesota constitution allows for exactly that – slavery as part of a punishment for a crime. Under article one, section two of the state’s constitution, involuntary servitude is barred unless someone has been convicted of a crime. Under the statute, prisoners can be subjected to unpaid and grossly underpaid work.

Through a subcontractor, Anagram International LLC, Disney has taken advantage of this law to extract nearly-free labor from the state’s inmates, paying them $0.90 an hour to fold large Mylar balloons, according to organizers of the event and two inmates who shared their firsthand experience."

https://unicornriot.ninja/2026/slavery-is-legal-in-minnesota-these-groups-are-working-to-change-that/

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Today in Labor History December 23, 1617: Just a few years after establishing Jamestown, Europe’s first lasting colony in North America, they created America's first penal colony in Virginia, though England had already been transporting convicts to the New World for several years. Between 1615 and 1699, English courts sent 2,300 convicts to toil in the American colonies, mostly in Maryland and Virginia. Between 1700 and 1775, they sent another 52,200 convicts. Some were as young as nine and ten. The majority had been convicted of petty crimes like shoplifting. Large numbers died from disease on the passage over. Most of the convicts who survived were sold into slavery and were much sought after, as they were cheaper than the white indentured slaves and black chattel slaves who were also living there. Many worked on tobacco plantations.

The majority of early colonists were also slaves, but as indentured servants they had a slightly different status than the convict laborers. Unlike the convicts, they had limited legal protections and rights as “persons,” whereas the convicts were considered property, with far fewer rights. Most of the indentured servants came to the colonies to escape famine and/or debt. They were promised passage to the new world and 50 acres of land in return for seven years of indentured servitude. However, few were ever able to fully repay their debt. Most failed at farming in those early years and survived on native plants and rodents. Over half the original Jamestown population died from starvation. Less than 2% of the population were of African descent through the 1650s. In that period, most of them were also there under the system of indentured servitude, rather than as chattel slavery.

Daniel Dafoe’s “Moll Flanders” portrays the life of one convict transported to the New World. Some call the novel a piece of propaganda in support of the convict transportation system, in part because of his positive portrayal of the Maryland and Virginia penal colonies. Benjamin Franklin, in contrast, said that America should export rattlesnakes in return for the convicts. He called the system “an insult and contempt, the cruellest perhaps that ever one people offered another; and would not be equal’d even by emptying their jakes on our tables.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #penalcolony #prison #colonialism #classwar #slavery #children #slavelabor #books #novels #fiction #writer #author @bookstadon