From 1922 to 1996, more than 30,000 young women were sent to live in church-run laundries, where they worked unpaid, prohibited from freedom of movement, usually for offenses like unwed pregnancy or being regarded as morally loose. On Tuesday, Irish Senator Martin McAleese released a report indicating the government’s guilt in enabling the enslavement.
The key findings are:
- More than a quarter of the women held in the laundries for whom records survived were sent in directly by the state. This numbers at least 2,500 women.
- The state gave lucrative laundry contracts to these institutions, without complying with fair wage clauses and in the absence of any compliance with social insurance obligations.
- The state inspected the laundries under the Factories Acts and, in doing so, oversaw and furthered a system of forced and unpaid labour, in violation of countless legal obligations.
Shameful. For additional details about the conditions these women suffered, see this article at The Irish Times.
Via The Frisky.