Prisoners to fill jobs that used to be held by unionized workers

[MMI]

I wonder what middle-class Orwell would have thought. He was, after all, a man of contradiction. Despite being an Etonian, an "intellectual socialist" and a Marxist, he had served with the Indian Police as the British Raj fell into decline. He was an advocate of the common man, and fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republicans (a necessary commitment to socialism for British left wing intellectuals in the 30's). He did not, however, support Stalinist Russia or its methods.

I believe Orwell would have disapproved of enslaving prisoners for a number of reasons, two of which den alludes to: enslavement is an affront to the dignity of any human being, and an indictment of any society that practices it; and the leaders of capitalism would rather use the cheaper prison labour than pay law-abiding workers an honest day's wage, thereby distorting the economy.

I'm not sure I approve of "union-only" jobs: non-union workers are surely just as entitled to work as people who pay union dues, but I strongly disapprove of a law purporting to give workers fair access to work being used to provide cheap labour at everyone else's expense. To me, that's corrupt.

Orwell despised corruption.

[Thorne]

I believe Orwell would have disapproved of enslaving prisoners for a number of reasons

But we aren't talking about slave labor here. We're talking about voluntary work on government properties while earning "points" towards early release, and/or special privileges. Basically, the government (whichever entity is running the prison) provides unskilled labor from a pool of prisoners who want to make their lives better, while saving the cost of over-payed union labor to do unskilled jobs. The necessary work on maintaining infrastructure gets done without soaking the taxpayers.