As the wildfires in California continue to tear across the northern part of the state, all available hands have been on deck to fight the blazes. Over 8,000 firefighters were mobilized by Thursday, according to Cal Fire, but they weren’t the only group at the ready. Approximately 200 female inmates fight fires in California as part of an ongoing fire camp program, and they do so for only $1 an hour.
“It’s really slave labor,” candidate for Lieutenant Governor Gayle McLaughlin says in an interview with Bustle. “It’s saying, ‘Hey, we’ll give you a dollar an hour’ as if that’s anything at all.”