UNITED STATES/LABOUR: Captive Workers, Cheap Labour

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Nov 16 1995 (IPS) - In Oregon, prison authorities last year reported sales of more than 4.5 million dollars worth of convict- made jeans called “Prison Blues.” That project was so successful that California’s prison system is thinking of marketing its own convict-made trousers: “Gangsta Blues.”

Welcome to the world of prison-made goods, where convicts in many U.S. state corrections systems earn a few — by some accounts, very few — dollars producing goods for the mass market.

Robert Gangi, head of the Correctional Association of New York — which monitors prisoners’ rights — estimates that the New York State system alone currently has thousands of prisoners involved in producing office goods and similar equipment. Recently, New York authorities have marketed prison-made soaps and other items, touting their origin in special catalogues.

The ‘San Francisco Chronicle’ reported recently that some 10 percent of prison inmates in Arizona currently work for private firms, earning less than the U.S. minimum wage of 4.25 dollars an hour.

The American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) conglomerate also recently hired 50 inmates to market products by telephone, paying them a mere two dollars an hour.

Some unions and prison rights activists are upset by the growth in prison labour. But prison officials, anxious to offset the hefty costs of jailing people, a get-tough mood among the public, and positive reaction from prisoners themselves have boosted the prospects for partnerships between prisons and private enterprise.

California voters approved prison labour in 1990, when they passed Proposition 139 which allows prisoners to make goods for the outside market. Since then, the state’s Corrections Department estimates that prison labour has earned it some 1.3 million dollars to help pay for the inmates’ lodging.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery or involuntary servitude, made an exception for convicted criminals. But it remains illegal for private companies to hire workers in prison outright. Instead, they must reach an agreement with state prison systems to open prison-site workplaces and divide the profits with the state authorities.

The firms then set up shop within the prisons themselves — phone banks for marketing, constructions facilities and even small- scale factories. The prisoners, in turn, get to keep some of the profits, while most of the money their labour produces goes to the state prison authorities to help defray the rising cost of keeping them under lock and key.

Not everyone is happy that the inmates are essentially paying to keep themselves in jail, while producing goods at rates that are illegal outside prison walls.

“I can’t imagine it’s a good thing,” says Mia Butzbaugh of ‘Labour Notes,’ a publication on U.S. workers. The threat that companies can turn to sub-minimum wage prison workers alone can help discourage U.S. workers in general from seeking higher wages, she argues.

“There’s always that sense of, ‘There’s someone out there who can do the work cheaper’,” Butzbaugh says.

Several unions, including the United Automobile Workers (UAW), have argued that inmates are taking away good assembly jobs from workers outside. They compare this with the loss of well-paying jobs here to overseas workers willing to toil for U.S. firms at much lower wages.

In fact, many companies which have also sent work abroad to ‘maquiladora’ assembly plants are now also taking advantage of prison labour. ‘The New Statesman and Society,’ a British magazine, reported that DPAS, a U.S. company, closed up shop at a Mexican maquiladora three years ago and opened up a data- processing centre at California’s infamous San Quentin prison.

“We have a captive labour force, a group of men who are dedicated, who want to work,” DPAS owner Bob Tessler gushed to the ‘New Statesman’. “That makes the whole business profitable.”

The DPAS workers, however, earn exactly the U.S. minimum wage of 4.25 dollars an hour — far below wages for data-entry workers just a stone’s throw outside the prison gates in San Rafael.

“Prisoners certainly should be paid more,” says Gangi, noting that no prison-labour programme is paid at rates comparable with the outside world. “They do heavy labour. Some inmates think this is a rip-off.”

But Gangi concedes there are several reasons why the programmes are popular among many prisoners themselves.

“A lot of the prisoners who participate in these programmes like them,” he says. “You earn some money, pick up a skill and your day passes more quickly.” That last fact may be the most important, he adds: “It’s always good to keep prisoners busy.”

But Butzbaugh disagrees. She notes that, in the 1920s and 1930s — the last time it was legal for private companies to hire prisoners outright — there was a similar ideology of improving the workers by giving them skills, while having them help to pay for their incarceration.

“Now, with 23-hour lockdowns and ‘three strikes and you’re out’ (permanent incarceration rules), there’s no argument that the prisoners are gaining anything,” she says. Nor has the justification that prison labour significantly lowers costs ever worked, in the 1930s or today, she argues.

Oregon’s prison system has reported a profit off ‘Prison Blues’ jeans and other products marketed by the state-run Uni Group. But most state joint-venture programmes still run at a loss, and employ very few inmates.

That may change soon though, if Senator Phil Gramm of Texas has his way. Gramm, who is campaigning for the Presidency, said recently, “I want to de-criminalise prison labour in America.” The right-wing candidate, if elected, seeks to remove laws barring private firms from hiring prisoners, or from transporting prison- made goods across state borders.