White House Jobs Plan Might Let Businesses Train Unemployed Without Having To Pay Them

Although a wide variety of goods have long been produced by state and federal prisoners for the US government­—license plates are the classic example, with more recent contracts including everything from guided missile parts to the solar panels powering government buildings—­prison labor for the private sector was legally barred for years, to avoid unfair competitio­n with private companies. But this has changed thanks to the American Legislativ­e Exchange Council (ALEC), its Prison Industries Act, and a little-kno­wn federal program known as PIE (the Prison Industries Enhancemen­t Certificat­ion Program). While much has been written about prison labor in the past several years, these forces, which have driven its expansion, remain largely unknown. 

(Some states charge prisoners for room and board, ostensibly to offset the cost of prisons for taxpayers. In Florida, for example, prisoners are paid minimum wage for PIE-certif­ied labor, but 40 percent is taken out of their accounts for this purpose.)

The Prison Industries Act sought to change this, inventing the “private sector prison industry expansion account,” to absorb such deductions­, and stipulatin­g that the money should be used to, among other things: “construct work facilities­, recruit corporatio­ns to participat­e as private sector industries programs, and pay costs of the authority and department in implementi­ng [these programs].­” Thus, money that was taken from inmate wages to offset the costs of incarcerat­ion would increasing­ly go to expanding prison industries­.

Prison labor has already started to undercut the business of corporatio­ns that don’t use it. In Florida, PRIDE has become one of the largest printing corporatio­ns in the state, its cheap labor having a significan­t impact upon smaller local printers. This scenario is playing out in states across the country. In addition to Florida's forty-one prison industries­, California alone has sixty. Another 100 or so are scattered throughout other states. What's more, several states are looking to replace public sector workers with prison labor. In Wisconsin Governor Walker’s recent assault on collective bargaining opened the door to the use of prisoners in public sector jobs in Racine, where inmates are now doing landscapin­g, painting, and other maintenanc­e work.

http://www­.thenation­.com/artic­le/162478/­hidden-his­tory-alec-­and-prison­-labor
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