“California slave labor: Jailed pre-trial detainees work for private firm—for nothing”, 6 August 2025

In Alabama and Louisiana, the state prisons “sell” their convicts to private companies, many of them fast food firms, to go out and work, for a dollar or two a day. Unions call that, literally, slavery. But Santa Rita, Calif., beats the Southern states.

There, legal papers show that eight pre-trial detainees—people not convicted of the crime for which they are charged—who can’t make bail sit in their cells, exiting only to swab the jail cafeteria’s floors and prepare jail meals for the private for-profit company Aramark.

They toil eight hours or more a day, six days a week, and they get paid nothing at all. If they refuse to work, they’re punished by their jailers, and the punishments are dire. And, the case records show, at least one has been toiling for at five and a half years.

In Alabama, the convicts—not pre-trial detainees—got “rented” out by the state, which made a lot of money off the deal, too, as corporate greed for ultra-cheap jail labor led firms to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars. The same was happening in Louisiana, where agribusiness giants and food corporations rely on prison-raised meat and crops.

The Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, which has publicized some of this prior exploitation, flat-out called it “modern-day slavery.” RWDSU and the AFL-CIO sued to stop it.

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“The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit asked us to decide whether non-convicted incarcerated individuals working in a county jail for a private company have a claim for minimum wage and overtime under California law. We conclude the answer is no,” the court said.

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Ruelas, Jones, Mason, and Nunez-Romero “performed sanitation services” in the Santa Rita jail kitchen. The other four prepared the food not just for the Santa Rita jail but for all the jails in Alameda County and elsewhere. Alameda’s county seat is the often-progressive city of Oakland.

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“Sometimes plaintiffs work in excess of eight hours a day or 40 hours a week, six or seven days a week. Nonetheless, plaintiffs are not paid any wages for their work on Aramark’s behalf.” They sued the sheriff, the county, and Aramark for their pay and overtime.