Prison Labor

...A few unions have in fact found a strategy that may, for now, work better than either unionizing or demonizing inmates...

...But there are numerous barriers...

...San Quentin's general inmate population has an 80 percent recidivism rate...

...Again, organized labor played a major part in their regulation...

...In 1979, the federal government passed the Prison Industries Enhancement Act (PIE), establishing the PIE program, which exempts state prisons from the federal ban on selling prison-made goods in interstate markets, provided they pay "prevailing wages," consult with local unions, and do not take jobs from free workers (The PIE program is cited as a model of humane and labor-friendly prison labor even by many prisoners' advocates, though the "prevailing wage" is a bit of a myth...

...Unions will probably find that inmate laborers, too, are here to stay...

...The United States bans the import of prisonmade goods and has condemned China's continued use of inmate labor...

...This sounds like a lurid tale from the turn of the last century, but it is happening today...

...A few prisoners in Rosharon, Texas, have formed the Texas Prisoners Labor Union, whose executive director, Willie A. Milton, has been placed in adminstrative segregation several times...

...inmates, out of 1.8 million, currently work for private companies...

...I don't frankly know if it's feasible...

...In 1994, Oregon voters approved an amendment to the state's constitution requiring all inmates to work more than forty hours a week (next year, voters will have an opportunity to rescind the measure...

...LIZA FEATHERSTONE is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, N.Y...

...In a letter to a White-Bey supporter, the Missouri Department of Corrections stated that it did not oppose a prisoners' union per se, but that the MPLU members were encouraging disobedience, and were the "most violent prisoners in the system...

...And you don't have to endorse unions' protectionism, or their absolutism on the issue, to agree that so far, education might prove to be of more long-term rehabilitative value for prisoners than unskilled labor...

...This way, the union trains future members, and the inmates get a real skill (90 percent of the graduates of this program stay out of prison after their release...

...In addition, hysteria over crime has led to short-sighted, politically driven prison policies that emphasize punishment over rehabilitation...

...It was around this time that businesses hiring free people also began raising objections to prison labor...

...But for decades, the organization has consistently opposed the expansion of federal prison industries...

...And at the federal level, a controversial attempt to expand the Federal Prison Industries program—which, with some 18,000 participants, is already the largest single employer of convicts—is now underway...

...The main reason that organized labor opposes inmate labor is that it can take away jobs from unionized workers, and depress the wages of free workers through competition with the companies that hire them...

...Other labor spokespeople echo this criticism...

...But workfare didn't go away, and neither did the new group of workers it spawned...

...Since Hums has been in a maximum security single cell—in a unit specially designed, says Mississippi Department of Corrections spokesperson Winn McInnis, for "the worst of the worst"—since 1995, his networking opportunities, like those of Milton and White-Bey, are limited...

...He anticipated that in a floor fight there would be Republicans "who would turn on McCollum like rabid dogs...

...Most 72 DISSENT / Spring 2000 "civilian" unions, by contrast, oppose the entire notion of prison labor as a threat to the jobs of law-abiding people...

...Given the likelihood of prison industries' expansion and the deeply exploitative nature of prison work, it might make sense for the AFL-CIO and its members to turn more attention toward prisons...

...And even if a fullfledged organizing effort is impossible, it seems short-sighted for unions to maintain no relationships at all with some of the poorest and most exploited workers in the nation...

...now San Francisco unions work with welfare recipients through POWER, and similar alliances have been formed in New York and Philadelphia...

...Botkin served as one of two labor representatives on the state Prison Industries Board, the governing body that administered the work program...

...We're happy to get members where we can, but—I don't anticipate that's an area we'd be getting into...

...At the federal level, labor and industry were recently united in their opposition to HR 2558, a bill drafted by Representative Bill McCollum that, if passed, would have lifted the ban on interstate traffic in prison-made goods...

...But for inmates who want to join unions, the future isn't promising...

...As Christian Parenti points out in his new book on the prison industry, Lockdown America, most inmates still aren't working, and most correctional industries programs lose money...

...A Texas Department of Corrections spokesman could not comment on the reasons for Milton's confinement...

...Sometimes prisoners have even been used as scabs during strikes, most infamously by Trans-World Airlines in the mid-1980s...

...In the 1930s, pressure from labor and industry, combined with the political imperatives of unacceptably high unemployment, brought about tighter federal regulation of interstate transport and sale of prison-made goods...

...74 n DISSENT / Spring 2000...

...In Mississippi— where, as in Texas, prisoners are forced to work full time without any compensation—a prisoner named Victor Hums is attempting to form a union that would demand that prisoners be paid minimum wage for all private-sector work, and at least $140 per month for all other labor...

...Jay Power, legislative director of the national AFL-CIO (interviewed before the McCollum bill died), explained why the union flatly opposed it: "It takes away jobs from people who are not convicts...

...But there are strong pressures to expand the pool...

...In some places, the unions have been successful...

...she says it was a constant struggle to make sure the inmates wouldn't be taking jobs from free workers...

...A Michigan prisoner, Ali Khalid Abdullah, recently wrote DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 73 PRISON LABOR an impassioned letter to Kalberer urging the fragmentary anarchist union to support his and other fledgling prisoners' unions, citing the difficulty of organizing prisoners with "no outside support...

...The board approved the "Prison Blues" program, in which prisoners work in a blue jean factory, because, Botkin explains, "there are no other blue jean factories left in the Pacific Northwest...

...having nothing to do all day adds to the violence and inhumanity of prison life, and many wouldn't mind making money to send to their families, or developing some job skills to prepare them for life outside...

...in 1994, unions stopped Toys 'R Us in Chicago from doing the same...

...Asked about the AFL-CIO's view of prisoners' unions, Power says he isn't aware of any AFL-CIO affiliate or any other union engaged in organizing inmates...

...Both McCollum's and Hoekstra's bills languished in committee, and it is unclear whether either will be resurrected this year...

...Though he isn't suicidal, he has at times been placed on suicide watch so his every move can be filmed...

...Steve Williams, founder of the San Francisco welfare recipients' organization People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) says just a few years ago, unions wouldn't consider organizing workfare workers...

...No prison administration is likely to voluntarily recognize prisoners' organizations, so, given the constraints posed by Jones v. North Carolina, a serious prison organizing effort would require a staggering commitment of resources...

...Nine states, including Alabama and Arizona, have brought back chain gangs...

...In the post–Civil War South, emerging industries like mining and railroads depended on inmate workers...

...Other MPLU leaders have received similar treatment...

...Consider the plight of workfare workers—another stigmatized group who must either be redefined as "workers" with rights or continue to work in near-slavery conditions...

...For one thing, most prisoner activists don't completely oppose prison labor...

...Botkin says her union, along with the Teamsters and the Building Trades, campaigned against the measure, but "we didn't put money into it...

...They've all moved overseas...

...She isn't optimistic that next year will play out any differently...

...The MPLU, whatever its flaws or merits, is not alone...

...Since the AFL-CIO represents corrections and police officers, the union and its affiliates are careful not to completely oppose prison labor (guards tend to support prison work programs, because working inmates are often better-behaved...

...WhiteBey is constantly being transferred from one prison to another (he was transferred three times in 1999), presumably to make it even more difficult for him to network with other prisoners...

...As Parenti points out, the state deducts 80 percent of the wages for room and board, so inmates end up getting between 65 cents and $1.50 an hour...

...The expansion of the private prison industry has also created a climate in which prisons seek not only to save money, but also to profit...

...The prison population has tripled over the past two decades, placing a great burden on taxpayers...

...pBISON LABOR was prevalent in the United States throughout the nineteenth century...

...More disturbingly, they have placed White-Bey in administrative segregation— known to inmates as "Ad Seg" or "The Hole," also known as solitary confinement—since last spring for "disobedience...

...Even when prisoners are properly compensated, conditions are relatively comfortable, and work voluntary, one can argue that prison is an inherently coercive environment, and that any work exacted from people who have so little control over their lives is a form of slavery...

...Mainstream unions' caution about these issues is understandable...

...It would be a glorious fight to fight...

...Jerome White-Bey, the founder of the Missouri Prisoners Labor Union (MPLU), recently organized his fellow inmates to file 1,383 grievances in a single week...

...He laughs...

...The miners stormed the stockades, freed the convicts, and burned down the prison, forcing management to stop using inmate labor and to give the miners their jobs back...

...They thought these people were unorganizable, too crazy...

...he relished them...

...They've got a lot against them and not much for them...

...We should be clear about what this means: Some left critics of the DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 71 PRISON LABOR practice have exaggerated the notion that prison work programs are profitable and that, as in the Old South, industry's needs for cheap labor are driving sentencing policy...

...Now if you call Oregon DMV," says Mary Botkin, political coordinator for the Oregon American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers, which led the unsuccessful battle against the 1994 amendment, "you're talking to an inmate...

...Asked if Hums is being held in maximum security for his union activities, McInnis says he doesn't know, but "sure, if he's conspiring anything, they'll take him away...

...Few workers in America are more in need of workplace justice...

...Oregon's is just one of many regional struggles over prison labor...

...And just as fundamentally, unions believed the welfare recipients had no right to work at all because they were taking jobs from unionized workers...

...Until very recently, most unions' posture was simply to oppose workfare programs across the board, and not to make alliances of any sort with the workers themselves...

...The leaders and workers in question are prison inmates...

...pETER KALBERER, an Albuquerque member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), who has been active on WhiteBey's behalf, compares mainstream unions' rhetoric on prison labor to that of the pre–Civil War Free Soil movement, many of whom were "against slavery but against slaves, too...

...in this context, the demand that inmates "earn their keep" has a certain popular resonance...

...Labor is obligatory, and pay is well below minimum wage...

...Unions in Washington State are currently struggling to prevent correctional industries from displacing workers...

...PRISON LABOR Today, unions are leading the resistance to federal and state efforts to expand the use of prison labor...

...Over the past twenty years, more than thirty states have enacted laws permitting the use of inmate labor for private industry...

...prisoners who have attempted to organize unions among their fellow inmate workers have found this country's correctional system about as labor-friendly as Indonesia, and they have few outside advocates...

...So far the IWW is the only outside union that has given any active, ongoing support to prisoners' labor organizing...

...But authorities wearied of the labor representatives' objections to other inmate work assignments and eventually removed them from the board...

...So far the strike actions merely annoy corrections administrators, but they do suggest an unusual degree of inmate solidarity...

...If they raise their voices they get thrown in the hole...

...Supreme Court decision Jones v. North Carolina denied any constitutional protection to prison workers' organizations...

...Businesses, especially small businesses, tend to oppose expansion of the program because of their usual anxieties about unfair competition...

...In recent years, Oregon, Texas, Mississippi, and several other states have passed laws requiring prisoners to work...

...Still, organizing, says Kalberer, "is a risky thing for prisoners...

...Less aggressively, the same coalition—the Prison Industries Reform Alliance—that worked to defeat the McCollum bill also lobbied to pass legislation sponsored by Repsentatives Pete Hoekstra and Barney Frank that would have curbed the expansion of the Federal Prison Industries program...

...In Ohio, in 1992, the United Auto Workers managed to stop Honda from replacing union workers with inmates...

...Only about 80,000 U.S...

...Then, in the 1970s, a dramatic rise in the prison population, combined with major prison riots, inspired an attempt to revive prison industries...

...We're not going to be organizing convicts...

...The Coal Creek Rebellion of 1891 started when the Tennessee Coal Company in Briceville, Tennessee, locked out its coal miners for refusing to sign a contract barring them from union membership and replaced them with leased convicts...

...Another concern is that unionizing prisoners might legitimize prison labor, which, even if reformed, would always be a fundamentally undemocratic practice...

...But we might also ask whether there isn't a failure of imagination here...

...the 1977 U.S...

...This sharply curbed the practice, though the famously brutal chain gangs of the South weren't abolished until the 1950s...

...At best, IWW members have been able to help prison labor activists publicize their causes, to a very limited degree...

...Thus when budgets are tight, work programs have survived, while many programs of greater proven rehabilitative value, like drug treatment or education, have vanished...

...The Missouri Department of Corrections has refused to recognize the MPLU (no surprise...

...In the late nineteenth century, organized labor provided the first serious challenges to the convict labor system...

...Incarceration has emerged not only as a public safety matter, not only as a desperate indicator of race and class inequity in America, but as an urgent labor issue...

...They continue to try: the MPLU's Jerome White-Bey has received mail from prisoners as far away as Georgia asking for advice on starting unions...

...Since 1978, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has intermittently, depending on available funding, trained San Quentin inmates as apprentice electricians...

...they didn't like having to compete with industries using low-cost convict labor...

...If the McCollum bill had passed, asked Ann Hoffman, legislative director for the garment and textile workers' union (UNITE), wouldn't the United States be "doing exactly what we criticize China for doing...

...Power was not oblivious to the conservative implications of finding yet another way to paint inmates as a threat to law-abiding folks...

...Silent, peaceful strikes are frequent in the Missouri system, where prisoners make shoes, clothing, furniture, soap, mattresses, metals, computers, and fish hooks, for both private companies and state-operated factories...

...And the IWW is so small, decentralized, and lacking in resources or coordination that to call it a "union" would, generally speaking, be an optimistic exaggeration...

...He says he has been confined for his political activities, and that his personal belongings, including union literature, have been repeatedly confiscated...

...Labor's organizing capacity is already stretched thin...