A drug rehab program has sent patients to work without pay
revealnews.org
revealnews.org
I don't think our society will face meaningful change unless there are physical consequences (read: jail) to doing terrible-human-being stuff like this. The executives will just go off with their cushy $20M severance paychecks and exploit some other group of people in a slightly different way.
I agree. We've been using that excuse for too long. In the 50's William Levitt, the country's largest home builder and the originator of the modern suburb, said exactly that when asked why he built white only communities.
"If we sell one house to a Negro family, 90 to 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community."
"As a Jew, I have no room in my heart for racial prejudice. But the plain fact is that most whites prefer not to live in mixed communities. This attitude may be wrong morally, and someday it may change. I hope it will."
In other words: I know it's wrong, but I'm just doing what my customers want.
He did more than just use that excuse, he played the "I can't be racist because I'm a Jew" card.
His reference to "white customers" doesn't even exclude Jews, to begin with. Like, in 1950's America, did Jews eagerly move into communities with large numbers of blacks, in stark contrast to "whites"?
But I agree with you that "I can't be racist because I'm a Jew" is ridiculous, and that real estate profiteering off of racism is abhorent regardless of who is doing it.
In my friend's home town, the federal government has deemed it to be "too white", and is trying to build a 500 unit housing complex, and bus in people from 80 miles away to live there.
And to anyone who loves talking about how enlightened they are, ask yourself if YOU would choose to live next to government housing for 500+ low income people. Of course you wouldn't.
Also low income people need to live somewhere, and how exactly are they "busing" in people to live there? I'm pretty sure your story is missing some details. Can you link us to a local article on it so we can find out more for ourselves?
Actually, forget who the people are. Would you be ok with the federal government forcibly disrupting your community and bypassing local governance, to build buildings that nobody asked for, and inviting displaced strangers into your community?
And their rationale for this is punitive. They target communities that are deemed to be too homogenous.
They do this all around Chicago. The federal government engages in what is essentially balkanization. And people are justified in not being happy about it.
A private group sued the county after they "collected $52 million in federal development grants by falsely certifying in the grant paperwork that it had analyzed impediments to fair housing."
There was a federal development grant that required the county to conduct an assessment of it's zoning policies to determine whether those zoning policies prevented developers from building affordable housing. Many counties have policies like that--minimum square footage, minimum acreage etc...
The county lied, said they had conducted this analysis, and collected $52 million. As punishment they were forced to pay back some of the money, and issue permits for 750 affordable homes. Not housing projects. The federal government didn't build any homes, they didn't bus anyone in from 80 miles away.
And the primary motivating force for this settlement were local advocacy groups who were arguing against overly restrictive zoning by local government. In fact this entire situation is an example of government overreach in exactly the opposite direction. The local government created a problem, and the Federal government stepped in to provide redress to local petitioners.
...why not?
And since you think it would be so beneficial to live in or near one, I am still wondering why you don't consider moving there. Maybe you can just admit that there are real liabilities to living in an area like that.
Do you need to see a heat map to see the crime rates and violence? Do you think that is a conspiracy theory? Do you enjoy being assaulted and burglarized?
I don't hate these people, I don't blame them for their plight. But they are still more likely to be dangerous.
Would you drop your kids off at a daycare center in a prison, or a drug rehab clinic? Most of the people are probably still good, but a larger proportion of them will be dangerous.
Poor people are forced to live there because that is the only affordable place. These places require better public housing and public service rights.
You are putting the cart before the horse. It is the other way around.
And so, you can put these people in wealthy suburbs, but it won't actually transform them into the residents of those suburbs.
The commute sucks. We need public housing closer to public transit and employment centers.
It's another way of saying "All I care about is the money I get". If the price is high enough, his conscious could be bought. Sure, maybe he feels bad for hurting a group of people, and his Jewish ancestry shows he knows what that's like to be the short end of the stick. But this is the opposite of taking the high road. It's about as impactful as saying "Thoughts and prayers to those people I displaced, buuuttt... it turns out it's way more beneficial for me if I just roll with this, so.. sorrryyyy."
The "You can't blame me for selling out because you would do the same thing" argument is an overrated defense.
> "I was just following incentives" is becoming the new Nuremberg defense.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19709730
I'm clearly not the only one who has had this thought...
Blog post on this sort of issue in academia: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-inc...
Also seen on HN: "if I don't take this opportunity, the next guy will anyway"
<cynic>It may also have been God...</cynic>
I will add that part of this is what you say, but I think part also has to do with our lack of empathy for 'losers' and 'criminals'.
Most of the people being subjected to this had jail as the other option.
It is not just like slavery, it _is_ slavery. The 13th amendment explicitly and intentionally allows slavery as a form of punishment.
And at the end of the Civil War, southern states capitalized on this and passed broad laws like the vagrancy act that re-enslaved the recently freed. For example, looking for separated family became criminal vagrancy.
The curiously profitable idea that forced labor is somehow morally beneficial to its victim predates the Civil War and unfortunately clearly continues today.
Offering work to help pay the cost makes it much more accessible, and there is definitely a theraputic effect to be had from manual labor (exercise) and a regular schedule.
As long as the people there were (a) there voluntarily, (b) could leave at will, and (c) knew what they were getting into, I dont see anything wrong with it.
Of course, if they were not actually getting treatment, or if the work was considered all of the "treatment" they would get, then it's an outright sham and should be sued on malpractice grounds.
The article makes it clear that that's the case.
> Like many participants, Ethan Ewers was ordered to complete Cenikor by a Texas judge after failing a drug test while on probation. Once he arrived, he said he worked 43 days straight in a sweltering warehouse unloading cargo containers for Walmart.
> Multiple former staff members told Reveal that counselors routinely falsified counseling records to make it appear as though patients received more counseling than they did. During busy work seasons, some received no counseling at all.
We really need to amend the amendment that allows this sort of BS through - at the very least allowing prisons to harness a nearly free labour force lowers the ability for free labourers to compete with them - it's sort of like predatory pricing but for labour.
They have the ability to leave though, slaves don't. So while reprehensible, it's not slavery.
Wage theft is probably the best term I know of for this.
[1]: https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm
[2]: https://www.fastweb.com/career-planning/articles/let-s-get-l...
That's pure BS and - unless the training being received is purely academic in nature - people should get paid. And within this I include assisting a professor with research so they can publish a fancy paper and get lots of clout. If someone is reaping a benefit (i.e. if the activity exists for any reason other than purely to teach you things) then the employee should be paid.
If your company brings in students and steps them through problems you've already solved showing the process of identifying and resolving the issue after the fact - that's educational and good on your company for donating your time to help train a new generation - if they are contributing to the solution in any way then they're an employee.
Sorry, this is why I said "usually". One of the many circumstances under which internships must be paid is if you provide benefit to the company. Since most internships do this, even unpaid ones, most unpaid internships are illegal (but not all fo them).
It's all very vague and I'm sure you could lawyer up and find loopholes should students complain. But I feel like if you're giving unpaid internships in the first place, money for a court case is not on the table.
I wonder any states have DOL regulations that prevent companies from disparaging workers making valid wage disputes. Perhaps there could be additional statutory penalties if you could bait them into giving a bad reference on the basis of the wage issue.
I used to work with the interns at a previous job... they did nothing of significance and were paid. The time and effort everyone put into it was a net loss by far for the company.
The article says:
Many participants said Cenikor saved their lives and equipped them for success. After 18 months in the program, participants can become eligible to receive wages and graduate with jobs, a car and the tools to build a promising life. But fewer than 8 percent of people who enter Cenikor make it to graduation, according to the program’s own numbers, and therefore never receive a paying job.
So "many participants" said the program saved their lives, and while only 8% "graduated" did the program help any of the other 92% of participants with their drug problem?
I have a relative with serious drug problems, she's been through numerous drug treatment problems and has "kicked the drug habit for good" too many times to count. Drug rehabilitation is hard.
If this program actually worked, I'd be more inclined to overlook the hard work part (but not the dangerous work, but since it's happening at established employers, OSHA should be enforcing safer working conditions)
*IIRC, "never" has been changed to "rarely" in recent editions of the text, but only in the last decade or so.
[1] And to counter the argument, if you think "Oh, they're just going to spend it on drugs" yea, they might, they're an addict, but keeping their money is saying "they can never be trusted to work and earn an income" in which case why are they even being released.
“You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.” --Buckminster Fuller
So I agree that perfection is the enemy of the good in innovation, but it's been innovated so now it's time to incrementally improve the system if it's one that works. In this case unfortunately the company has been at it for more than twenty years, so they have refused to work to improving the system and instead have carried on with greedy exploitation which is a well warranted reason for punishment for those individuals.
Also, my apology if my statement seemed directed at you, it was not intended that way. I am quite serious about labour rights having worked in the gaming industry and my passion may have overflown.
For a large segment the unemployed criminal problem is probably a larger hurdle that the drug problem. Somewhere between 80 and 1,920 hours of fully-employed-appearance free labor is enough for them to achieve labor market value that outweights a drug-rehab-hard-labor-camp diploma. Only 8% of participants are willing to trade 6,240 hours of free-labor-camp-rehab just for emancipation and a rusty WV Jetta.
But it seems that they don't work. And that they're just a bullshit cover for slavery.
But what's the success rate for internships?