Showing posts with label divestment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label divestment. Show all posts

Saturday, March 20, 2021

Behind Bars No More

 

As we have become increasingly aware these past several years, institutional investments matter. And as public awareness has grown, so has pressure for the big funds to divest from ethically and environmentally suspect parts of their portfolio, be they holdings in fossil fuels, tobacco, firearms or gambling, to name but a few.

For teachers, the pressure to divest is not new. Well over two decades ago, there was a group of us who tried to convince the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan to take its money out of Maple Leaf Foods. At the time, the food-processing giant was in the midst of crippling wage cuts (about 40%) at its Burlington Ontario plant. 

The response we got was disappointing. We were told that the Plan had a "fiduciary responsibility' to its members to make as much profit as possible. Matters of principle could not be taken into consideration.

Fortunately, that amoral strategy is changing in Canada, thanks to grassroot pressure by union members.

A Canadian Crown corporation has sold off its entire stake in the American private prison industry following a public campaign by the union that represents the majority of federal employees.

The Public Sector Pension Investment Fund (PSP) bought more than 600,000 shares of CoreCivic and the Geo Group, two of the largest providers of private prisons, jails and immigration detention centres in the United States, in the last half of 2020.

In late February, days after a Toronto Star story exposed those acquisitions, PSP moved to sell off its shares in the two companies, according to a letter signed by PSP president and CEO Neil Cunningham.

“We believe it’s a victory,” said James Infantino, the pensions and disability insurance officer at the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). “We got out of an investment that our members abhor, so that’s in itself something to note and hopefully, it’s something that we can build on.”

A victory it is. If you know anything about the private prison industry in the United States, you know that its profits come from cutting corners (understaffing, denial or delay of needed medical care for prisoners, inferior food, etc.) If you are interested in the topic, an excellent book is American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey Into The Business of Punishment, by Shane Bauer. Given that a disproportionate number of people in prison are Black and Latino, it is difficult to see private prisons as anything other than a system of modern slavery.

Indeed, there is a thought-provoking documentary on Netflix called 13th, which looks at the sad history of incarceration that followed the abolition of slavery and continues to this very day. 

There is no way of avoiding the fact that inmates in both public and private prisons have become mere fodder for a cold, cruel and very calculating capitalism that should make everyone feel ashamed. An awakening public conscience is one reason to feel at least a modicum of hope that things may be changing. 

It is to be hoped that other institutional investors soon will no longer be behind bars.