Giving Compass' Take:

• Fast Company reports on a nationwide strike among prison inmates seeking higher wages and more protections for backbreaking, dangerous manual labor.

• Could this be a breakthrough for criminal justice reform? There have been calls to address the often-inhumane conditions by which inmates are forced to work.

• Read more about prisoners fighting wildfires for little pay.

From August 21 to September 9, inmates in prisons across at least 17 states, including California and New York, will go on strike. For nearly three weeks, prisoners that have jobs will not work. Inmates will refuse to eat and to spend money within the prison walls. In some facilities, inmates will participate in sit-in protests.

One of the strikers’ key demands centers around the work incarcerated people perform — often forced and always for absurdly low wages. Of the nation’s 1.5 million prisoners, at least half have a job, according to The Marshall Project. In some states, able-bodied prisoners are required to work, and are punished for refusal. The majority of employed inmates work to upkeep the prisons by serving food or cleaning cells. But around 60,000 prisoners nationwide participate in Federal Prison Industries (also known as UNICOR), a government-owned manufacturing corporation that relies on inmate labor to produce everything from military uniforms to license plates. In California, inmates are recruited to help fight the wildfires raging through the state.

If that sounds like slavery, it’s because it is: The 13th Amendment abolished slavery — “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” In other words: Slavery conditions are legal when imposed upon prisoners. And because of this clause, the courts consistently rule that inmates are not employees (because if they were classified as such, earning so little would be unconstitutional), and therefore are not entitled to worker protections like injury compensation or the right to organize as a union.

Read the full article about striking prison workers by Eillie Anzilotti at fastcompany.com.