I know everyone is talking about outsourcing of jobs but what about this?
The assembly lines at CMT Blues look like those at most any other U.S. garment factory. Workers hunch over industrial sewing machines intently stitching T-shirts. Unlike most garment workers, however, all of these are male. There is an even bigger difference: Armed guards patrol the shop floor.
CMT Blues is housed at the Maximum Security Richard J. Donovan State Correctional Facility outside San Diego. It is part of California's Joint Venture Program that links companies to state prisons. Seventy workers sew T-shirts for Mecca, Seattle Cotton Works, Lee jeans, No Fear,Trinidad Tees, and other U.S. companies. The highly prized jobs ay minimum wage. Less than half goes into the inmates' pockets. The rest is siphoned off to reimburse the state for the cost of incarceration, a victim restitution fund, the inmates' families, and mandatory savings accounts. The California Department of Corrections and CMT Blues owner Pierre Sleiman say they are providing inmates with job skills, work ethic, and income.
But two inmates who worked for CMT Blues say Sleiman and the Department of Corrections are operating a sweatshop behind bars. What's more, the inmates say that prison officials retaliated against them when they blew the whistle on what they claim was corruption at the plant. The prisoners claim they were forced to replace "Made in Honduras" labels with "Made in U.S.A." tags in an effort to defraud consumers. And they say they were not paid minimum wage, paid on time, or paid for their first month of work, as required by law.
They are suing CMT Blues, the garment labels that subcontracted the T-shirt manufacturer, Donovan's warden, other prison officials, and the California Department of Corrections for labor law violations, civil rights violations, and fraud. The suit, filed on August 23, 1999, in Los Angeles, has been moved to San Diego County, and the plaintiffs' attorneys expect to go to trial within a year.
The CMT Blues case is a window onto the "prison industrial complex." That term refers to the increasingly close relationship between private corporations and what were once exclusively public correctional institutions. It encompasses not only prison labor, but the host of firms profiting from private prisons, prison construction, and services like health care and transportation. In today's America, incarceration has become a booming business.
Charles Ervin and Shearwood Fleming, convicted murderers, each spent forty-five days in solitary confinement after Donovan prison authorities accused them of talking to the news media about an alleged label-switching scheme.
Sleiman denies any label-switching went on at the plant. "I'm not going to do bogus stuff inside a state prison," he says angrily.
The California Department of Corrections, along with Donovan prison officials, U.S. Customs, and the state Department of Labor, cleared CMT Blues of any charges after a ten-month internal investigation.
Noreen Blonien, a spokesperson for the Joint Venture Program, says the labor code violations were due to a payroll error after a minimum wage hike. "One cycle didn't catch the state minimum wage increase. We caught it at the end of the month," she explains, adding that workers were paid back wages.
The Corrections Department will not comment on a pending lawsuit, nor will Sleiman's attorney.
Sleiman, who leased the 28,000-square-foot factory at Donovan prison in 1996, gets a 10 percent California tax break for operating behind bars. He does not have to pay overtime, workers' compensation, vacation, or sick leave to his inmate employees. He says that operating at Donovan gives him a "competitive edge." It also allows him to sew a "Made in U.S.A." label in his clothes.
"Our clients are very particular. [The garment] has to be made in the U.S.," he says.
In April 1997, Fleming and Ervin were fired from CMT Blues, where they had worked since the plant opened seven months earlier. "They couldn't cut it, so they were released from the program," charges Sleiman, who says the prisoners filed suit to get back at him. But their lawsuit says they were terminated "in retaliation for their exercise of free speech and efforts to seek redress for violations of the labor code."
The suit also alleges that two months before firing Ervin and Fleming, Sleiman threatened to retaliate against the inmates if they went public with the label-switching scandal. "Defendant Sleiman's threats directly burdened or chilled Plaintiff's First Amendment rights and served no legitimate penological interest," the complaint notes.
http://www.prisonwall.org/labor.htm
A Texas company, U.S. Technologies, left 150 workers jobless when it sold off its Austin electronics plant. Just 45 days later, the same businessmen opened up shop in a nearby town -- using prison labor. Inmates at the notorious Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana have been de-boning chickens for 4 cents an hour for a private firm.
A Washington company "hired" prisoners to wrap software for Microsoft.
Golden arches, golden shackles? Oregon inmates produce electronic menu boards for McDonalds.
In New Mexico, inmates take hotel reservations by telephone. California convicts took TWA airline reservations over the phone -- during a flight attendants' strike.
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest of the nation's 88 private prison operators, teamed up with Company Apparel Safety Items in the first partnership between a private prison and a private manufacturer.
Next time you're turning the lights down and getting all comfy, consider this: Prisoners in South Carolina made lingerie for Victoria's Secret.
Business hot shots and politicians argue that this import of Third World conditions is justified because, after all, we need the jobs. In the words of an Arizona state official, "In select industries where America has lost jobs overseas, like shoes and textiles, you could bring these jobs back."
It's true. The San Francisco-based computer firm DPAS closed its data retrieval operation in Mexico in 1994, and transferred the work to inmates of San Quentin prison. "We have a captive labor force, a group of men who are dedicated. And the whole thing is very profitable," says the owner of DPAS. Prison labor is the ultimate reliable workforce.
The chief executive officer of Exchange Group once complained that at his firm's suburban Atlanta factory, "Our problem is getting people to show up every day." He's found a solution: the company now has inmates at the Gadsden Correctional Institution in Florida do the work, putting "Tickle Me Elmo" logos on T-shirts.
Not surprisingly, the Gadsden operation has provoked complaints from the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, which is worried about the loss of union jobs. Exchange Group's CEO is unruffled by the criticism: "We aren't taking anything away from anyone," he argues. "We're getting work done here that before was going offshore."
The U.S. prison population is an enormous -- and growing -- pool of potential cheap labor. Some 1.1 million Americans are in prison today, compared with 316,000 in 1980. Nearly 3 out of every 100 American adults are in prison or on parole or probation. Those numbers are likely to increase further as "three strikes" laws and welfare repeal take their toll. Western Penitentiary, scene of the January jailbreak, is already at 162 percent of capacity.
Keeping all these people in jail costs a lot of money. States are now spending about $25 billion a year on corrections. Caught between anti-tax agitation and anti-prisoner sentiment, a growing number of states are actually requiring prisoners to pay for their own incarceration. And of course, the private use of prison labor and the growing move to privatize prisons have a seductive appeal to state officials who can't be bothered about the loss of jobs and declining living standards for those workers still at liberty.
http://lpa.igc.org/lpv24/lp3.htm
Prison labor windfall for Corporate America?
