LATE STAGE CAPITALISM
Fire-Engulfed California Short on Firefighters as Prison "Slaves" Under
COVID-19 Lockdown
California's competing crises of climate change, COVID-19 and convict labor
have converged to create the perfect neoliberal storm.
by Alan Macleod
July 06th, 2020
By Alan Macleod
It is the height of California's dangerous forest fire season. But despite
blazes currently raging, the state's fire department is dangerously
understaffed. That is because many firefighters today are not the burly full
time professionals of another era, but underpaid convict laborers risking
their lives for pennies. Almost 40 percent of California's firefighters are
prisoners. But the state's penitentiaries are themselves ablaze with
COVID-19 outbreaks, leading to widespread lockdowns in what has become a
routine for American's dealing with competing crises.
Jails have been among the deadliest hotspots for transmission of the
coronavirus. At the notorious San Quentin State Prison just north of San
Francisco, there are nearly 1,400 active cases. Meanwhile, the state has
announced the deaths from COVID-19 of 16 inmates at the California Institute
for Men in Chino, San Bernardino County. In response to the crisis, prison
authorities have enacted strict lockdowns, including at CCC Susanville, the
home of the wildfire training program, where there are 224 confirmed active
cases of the virus.
This is severely hampering the fight against wildfires. Approximately 3,100
inmates work with the fire department tackling blazes, around 2,200 in the
front line, and 900 in support roles. Only those with the least serious
convictions are considered. Prisoners are paid between $2.90 and $5.12 per
day (less than the average income of a sweatshop laborer in Nicaragua), plus
$1 per hour of hazard pay during active emergency situations like the deadly
fires that engulfed the state late last year. They work alongside full-time
firefighters making an average of $91,000 per year before overtime pay and
bonuses but tend to do the harder, less desirable, or more dangerous tasks,
leading to multiple deaths in recent years. This has led to widespread
condemnation of the practice as akin to "modern slavery," especially because
inmates are effectively barred from even applying to the fire department
once their sentences are over. In order to become a firefighter, an
emergency medical technician license is required, something that is all but
impossible to achieve with a criminal record. Despite this, prisoners still
"volunteer" as the work is far more fulfilling than the alternative: more
time locked up.
The practice is a perfectly neoliberal solution to the growing threat of
climate change. The 2019-2020 winter was among the driest on record, with
much of Northern California seeing no rain whatsoever in February, leading
to forest fires far earlier than usual. Instead of wholesale changes in
energy production or consumption, or a great increase in professional
firefighters, the state has opted to use extremely cheap prison labor to
tackle the inevitable blazes. The measure allows for the government to
continue cutting public service budgets, while also acting as a check on
wage and working condition demands from public unions, as the threat of
being replaced by someone who is effectively a slave, increases.
There are currently two active fires in Morgan Hill, just south of San Jose.
Local officials announced that around 1,750 acres had been burned in total,
with local evacuations starting Sunday afternoon. While the Fire Department
said they were making good progress tackling the problem, the low humidity
and gusty winds made conditions ripe for more wildfires.
The conditions caused a separate fire burning at least 1,100 acres of land
in Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles, with approximately 400
firefighters, including at least some prison laborers, attempting to
confront the inferno. Meanwhile, after extinguishing a large fire in Squaw
Valley near Lake Tahoe, the Fire Department is currently reopening roads and
assessing the damage caused.
Thus, due to the state's overreliance on what is effectively coerced labor,
it is unable to adequately combat a perennial foe due. Like with the
dysfunctional health system, the coronavirus is exposing the limitations of
the current system we live under. Fighting fire with prison labor, it
transpires, does not work during a pandemic.
Today the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases topped 3 million in the United
States, including 264,832 in California.
