Elon Musk’s solar company used panels made by cheap prison labor for a big taxpayer-subsidized project | Grist Grist has already back peddled on the Elon Musk takedown story - Seems there's a bit o' irony here. Indignance went flying at the knee jerk notion an American company would use (Oregon prisoner - ie; low wage) slave labor. Yet, most of the pv manufacturers now days have fled to China for (in essence) slave labor wages. Poor Grist ... they lost the juiciness of their story - which as far as I can tell - was legal - albeit carried out by others - and not Musk's company. .
Yes sort of. The prison industry as a for profit, needs more prison laborers to make profits. We have non-violent offenders serving long jail time. The US is one of the most incarcerated countries. How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about - The Washington Post Now for those that should be in prison, having a job and learning skills is probably a good thing to help them go straight when they get out. This wasn't one of those programs. China is even worse on prison labor than the US. These prisioners were hired because they were cheap, less than $1/hr. These are not the good jobs that Oregon promised that would be created when they subsidized the project. It also wasn't solar city, it was another vendor. Solar city should have gone to the state and the vendor and demanded either a good training program in prison or that these would be good US jobs to fulfill the subsidies. It was the other vendors fault though. This is not like Apple/Foxconn where apple continues to work with the vendor even though it continues to have its awful non-prison labor, but awful working condition Chinese workers. Bad on solar city, but this is hardly a scandal. I hope they don't do it again. The state of oregon makes the law here, and they say its legal. Its unethical but legal. If you are trying to claim social responsibility, you should stay away from these unethical situations. Still Al Gore says its okay, and that is enough for a lot of people. If the reason we have a tariff on Chinese solar chips, is because of the good jobs, solar will bring to america, and we are using prison labor, that tariff is a farce, protecting for profits, but costing solar companies like solar city more. The Chinese don't use prison labor on their solar panels. That is really strange. Make sure the jobs are good, or cut the tariff. With no tariff, the US can produce more construction jobs installing less expensive solar panels. Japan is still dumping cars in the US, with soft barriers preventing import of foreign cars in japan. That costs more american jobs than the Chinese panel producers. No it would not stop Americans from buying the prius, it simply would make toyota move prius production to the US, and the price might go down. Toyota makes their chinese hybrids, in china now, but that is because they have a tariff.
Prison labor has the same effect on the economy as offshoring. Prisoners should be paid the minimum wage at least. Don't think being locked up in prison is enough punishment, and that they shouldn't make fair earnings from honest work. Fine, only pay them that $1/hr directly. Then put the rest into a savings account so that they have something for support when they get out, or to programs to reduce repeat offending, or to compensate victims of crime, or charity, or something so that the prison labor costs are on par with free company's down the street.
Back in my public defender days, iirc, in Calif about ½ of prisioner wages went to victims / restitution.
OK so if this sleazy solar company is paying $1/hr, how much is the victim getting? We know the program wasn't giving them job training, which would be classified differently. Agree that if they did job training (we don't want prisoners to just have to go back to prison) it would have a little merit. Have for profit companies pay them a proper wage, perhaps it could go to restitution first, then to a charity of the prisoners choice, if we don't want to enrich them. The system is so corrupt now. I think every company can make a mistake. I just don't think solar city shouldn't do it again. The Oregon government though will probably repeat this mistake.
