...there is a political economy to prison labor, and its primary beneficiary is neither the inmates performing the labor nor the consumers purchasing the product, but rather the vendors that make the product and the companies to which they sell it. Even if prisoner-workers earn the recently touted figure of $400 a month, that’s certainly not enough to support any family they have been separated from while incarcerated. These workers should be earning—at the very least—the $10 per hour that Whole Foods uses as its base wage, and when workers on the outside win our $15 per hour through the Fight for 15 campaign, prisoner-workers should get $15 too. CCI and Whole Foods’ claims that this is about helping inmates, not about making money, seem a bit flimsy when they are paying prisoner-workers $6.65 less than the federal minimum wage and $9.40 below the Whole Foods base wage. While the idea that people are unemployed because they lack work ethic is downright insulting, there are many people who could (potentially) benefit in the long run from access to things like job training, or dairy certifications. Despite the recent jobs report, full-time, living-wage employment remains out of reach for most workers in the United States. So if CCI’s programs are allegedly about job training, why target prisoners? Because they’re vulnerable, confined, and oppressed. Most important, it’s legal to pay these workers a mere fraction of the minimum wage. -- Dissent
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 00:32:18 +0000