Saturday, March 03, 2007

The new harvest of shame

There are certain stories that just make you completely want to vomit. This is one of them. In recent years, Colorado has passed some of the strictest anti-immigrant laws in the nation. Not surprisingly, migrants fled the state. This caused a not at all unexpected problem: a serious labor shortage.

So the state's Department of Corrections proposed a novel solution: use convicts to pick the melons, onions and peppers that the migrants used to harvest. Prisoners who opt to do this will earn 60 cents a day. This works out to less than $0.08 per hour in a state where the minimum wage is $6.85.

They can't get virtual slave labor from Latin America so they raiding American jails instead.

I guess it's easier than paying legal workers a decent wage.

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