Prison Labor, Prison Blues

AFL-CIO Label Letter, [16 December 1995]

Tens of thousands of state and federal prisoners being paid minimum or sub-minimum wages generated more than $1 billion a year in sales last year for private businessmen—often in direct competition with private sector workers.

And it’s getting worse. By the year 2000, according to the Correctional Industries Association, a full 30 percent of the state and federal inmate population will work, yielding $8.9 billion in sales for those who control their labor.

An investigative report on the scandal, Prison Labor/Prison Blues, was put together by the We Do The Work television show. Airing on Public Broadcasting Corporation stations beginning in March (see listing, p. X), the show cites union and business leaders’ concerns that the cheap source of labor undercuts other business and is unfair competition for job seekers on the outside.

The report describes some personal nightmares for workers who find themselves in competition with what could fairly be termed slave labor. And with Republicans pushing for $10 billion in new prison construction, things are likely to get even uglier than they already are.

Some horror stories from Prison Labor/Prison Blues:

• Most of the workers at Michigan’s Brill Mfg. Co. furniture plant lost their $5.65 an hour jobs when state prison inmates getting 56 cents to 80 cents an hour were hired in their stead.
• Some 100 Texas state prisoners being held at a privately owned jail in Lockhart are now doing jobs taken from computer circuit board assembly workers in Austin, Tex., whose plant was closed. The prisoners get the federal minimum wage and no benefits. The work is for computer industry giants such as IBM, Dell and Compaq.
• In Ohio, before the United Auto Workers was able to stop it, prisoners in the Ross County jail were assembling auto parts for Honda. To this day, prisoners are making toys and rakes, doing data entry and other tasks.
• Prison inmates have stocked shelves at a Toys ’R’ Us retail store outside Chicago. Juvenile offenders take phone reservations for TWA near Santa Barbara. San Quentin convicts do data entry work for private companies.
• Prison officials in Pendleton, Ore., run the Oregon Corrections Industries trade company, Unigroup, which manufactures convict-made designer jeans labeled, of all things, Prison Labor, and other clothing. A recent ballot initiative in Oregon would force all prisoners to work—presumably in competition with honest citizens.

While supporting opportunities for prisoners to learn useful trades, organized labor has condemned the use of convict labor in private sector jobs.

The TV report also documents how things can be done right -- like the story of San Quentin prisoner Casey Hayhurst, who participated in a training program administered by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 551 and landed a good job in a union shop ten days after his release.

TOYS-R

‘Convicts R Us’

-- Part I --

The Toys R Us store in Aurora, Ill., suspended at least temporarily its use of state-prison labor on its night shift after two unions in the area objected and mounted a highly publicized boycott of the nonunion toy-store-chain outlet.

The unions—Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 881 and Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 701—charged that the use of prison labor denied job opportunities to law abiding citizens in an area with high unemployment. It also gave the store an unfair advantage because the prisoners require no benefits. They also criticized the store’s failure to inform customers about its use of prison labor.

The unions challenged management claims that no one else wanted the jobs and that the prisoners only worked when the store was closed, stocking shelves and cleaning, and never came into contact with shoppers. The unions reported seeing inmate-workers there as late as noon.

A representative of the UFCW Local said the store did not hire any replacements when it suspended use of convicts and the expectation was that prison-labor would be returned sometime after the Nov. 8 elections.