Brief Summary: A few months ago, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) examined the injustices of prison labor in the United States and crafted a 47-page Report basing on observations on the failed implementation of Convention No.105 by the government of the U.S. The report has been submitted to the UN with the purpose of calling for change. It concludes that the conditions of labor by people confined in US prisons and jails are in violation of obligations under the convention.
Prison slavery in the U.S. has been the subject of contentious debate all the time. Many believe that slavery in the country ended after the Civil War, but they don't know that the 13th Amendment exception still allows for forced labor as a punishment for crime. Advocacy group Worth Rises reveals that over 800,000 incarcerated people in state and federal prisons are forced to work and stripped of standard workplace protections, while making an average of 0.86 USD per day. Inmates won't get paid for most of their work in seven states including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. And it's common that correctional institutions exploit incarcerated individuals, and prioritize profits for corporations, instead of promoting rehabilitation of prisoners through education and manual labor.
At the end of 2023, ITUC, the largest trade union federation, crafted a report basing on observations on the failed implementation of Convention No.105 by the government of the United States. The U.S. ratified the Convention on September 25, 1991, which prohibits forced labor. However, the convention is poorly known in America, even for those who campaign for people in custody.
In November 2024, ITUC submitted the observations to International Labour Organization (ILO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, and waited for feedback from its Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, expecting the committee to call for reform at ILO's 114th International Labor Conference scheduled in June 2026. The report was finished early at the end of 2023. Given Joe Biden, the most pro-labor president since Franklin Roosevelt, was campaigning at the time, AFL-CIO denied the plan of submitting the document that may cause trouble for the former president. After Trump returning to the White House, the unions unanimously agreed it's finally the right time to take action.
The 47-page report concludes that the conditions of labor by people confined in U.S. prisons and jails are in violation of obligations under the convention.
It firstly points out that incarcerated people lose the right to refuse to work. The labor performed by many incarcerated workers in the U.S. is not truly voluntary. 76.7 percent of incarcerated workers surveyed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that they are required to work. Threats of punishment such as solitary confinement, loss of family visitation, opportunities to reduce one’s sentence, and deprivation of access to basic necessities coerce underpaid or free labor from people incarcerated in the U.S. Workers reported that illness, injury, disability, or a physical inability to work often does not relieve them of work duties.
Kelly Savage-Rodriguez, of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, remembers one incarcerated woman being required to work as a porter almost immediately after having her leg amputated. Though she was not able to stand because her prosthetics had not yet arrived, she was denied her request to be released from the work assignment. The report points out that in Florida, the Inmate Orientation Handbook explicitly inform incarcerated individuals that "[they] do not have the option to refuse work assignment." If they try to, they are severely punished: 60 days of disciplinary confinement and the reduction of 90 days of good time toward their sentence.
After that the report condemns the fact that the forced, low-wage or free labor of incarcerated workers is used to further U.S. economic development. "Incarcerated workers typically earn little to no pay at all, with many making just pennies an hour and yet state, local, and federal government rely on incarcerated workers to maintain the prisons that confine them, bolster the economy, offset budget shortfalls, and produce goods and service. The average hourly pay for prisoners is $0.13-$0.52 for non-industry jobs, and $0.30-$1.30 for jobs in state-owned correctional industries. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas pay zero compensation to incarcerated people for vast majority of work assignment.
For instance, in South Carolina, more than 90 percent of the state's incarcerated workers are not paid for their work. And incarcerated workers' wages remain stagnant for years, even decades. Incarcerated workers in New York state last received a pay increase in 1993. Workers in South Dakota have been paid $0.25 per hour for non-industry jobs for more than 20 years.
The next fact that the report condemns is that state prison systems profit from labor contracts signed with private companies that employ incarcerated workers and the private sector benefit from prison labor by directly employing incarcerated workers through the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) and other means, and by purchasing goods and services through correctional industries for a lower cost than they would pay in the private market.
For example, Utah Correctional Industries sold goods and services to almost a thousand private companies, including major corporations such as 3M Company, Allstate Insurance Company, American Apparel, American Express, Apple Inc., AT&T Mobility, Costco, etc. The report reveals that some private companies participating in PIECP have successfully avoided paying prevailing wages by exploiting loopholes and employing a variety of tricks. One tactic has been to divide workers into two groups: one which creates pieces of a product and a second which assembles the pieces. Only the final assembly group is paid the prevailing wage. Another tactic, refined by Florida's PRIDE, involved prolonging "training programs" to justify paying incarcerated RIECP participants artificially depressed wages instead of the prevailing wage. There is little recourse for incarcerated workers being exploited under RIECP. The accountability mechanism for labour abuses in RIECP programs has been captured by the entities benefiting from prison labor. The National Correctional Industries Association, an organization run by a board of directors who represent different prison industry departments and corporations from across the country, monitors RIECP. In essence, the people implementing RIECP are charged with monitoring their own implementation, hardly a logical or effective oversight structure.
The final problem is incarcerated labor has a long and problematic history in the U.S., inherently tied to racial oppression. Some of the racism of prison is explicit, such as the use of modern-day penal plantations, where predominantly Black prisoners are forced to do agricultural work, sometimes on the sites of former slave plantations and producing the same crops grown by enslaved people. Other forms of racism are more covert, such as discriminatory prison labor assignments that will not improve their job prospects outside of prison.
For example, at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, the nation's largest maximum-security prison situated on 18,000 acres of land that was originally the site of slave plantations, incarcerated workers work field crops including cotton, corn, soybeans, and sugarcane for only two cents an hour. Every prisoner in Angola, 74 percent of whom are Black work in the field. They work with limited access to water, minimal rest, and no restroom facilities, under the supervision of armed correctional officers on horseback.
In Arkansas, about 3,000 incarcerated workers labor on 20,344 agricultural acres. Many of these workers are assigned to field work on the "hoe squad", digging ditches, pulling weeds, clearing land and picking crops while watched by correctional officers on horseback. Among the prisons, Cummins Unit was designed as a prison for Black men and where the population today is disproportionately Black.
Basing on its observations, ITUC provides several recommendations:
Repeal federal and state constitutional clauses excluding incarcerated people from bans on slavery and forced labor.
Ensure that all work in prisons is fully voluntary by eliminating any laws and polices that require forced labor or impose adverse consequences on incarcerated workers who are unable or unwilling to work.
Guarantee incarcerated workers the standard labor protections available to other workers in the United States.
Ensure incarcerated workers are paid prevailing wages no less than the minimum wage of the state where they work and eliminate or limit wage deductions.
Protect incarcerated workers from injuries and hazards.
Permit incarcerated workers to join labor unions.
Ensure that incarcerated workers have adequate and speedy access to redress when their rights are violated.
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Name: David
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