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Apply NOW! http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/NextCard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [Via... http://www.egroups.com/group/Communist-Internet ] . . ----- Original Message ----- From: The Infamous Vinnie Gangbox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2001 11:59 PM Subject: [cpusa] Fwd : [gangbox] Fwd : CAVITY SEARCHES, RAZOR WIRE AND $ 1.36 AN HOUR : INSIDE THE HARSH WORLD OF AMERICA'S 85,000 CONVICT LABORERS, LEASED OUT TO PRIVATE CONTRACTORS On Sat, 9 Jun 2001 15:56:33 -0700 (PDT), [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: from the NEW YORK TIMES : June 6, 2001 Management: Behind Bars and on the Clock By EDWARD WONG -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PENDLETON, Ore. - The workday begins on a patch of black asphalt ringed by razor-wire fence. This is where more than 200 inmates of the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution line up at 7:45 on weekdays. They are clad in blue jeans and inspected like cattle by men with pistols and crew cuts and gray uniforms. Their names are called out, their bodies frisked. Fifty of them march into a yellow concrete factory building the size of a hangar and punch a time clock. Inside, they are no longer "on the inside." Inside, they are the hired hands of John Borchert. "I hope you enjoy your stay," he tells them at the door. Mr. Borchert is the general manager of the Array Corporation, a private company with $2 million in annual revenue that employs inmates primarily to make garments. The factory churns out 50,000 pieces of clothing a year, most of them jeans and work shirts. Half are bought by the state to clothe prisoners. The rest are sold in retail stores under the brand Prison Blues and using the slogan, "Made on the inside to be worn on the outside." Mr. Borchert and his floor managers, Tom Wise and Nick Hiatt, walk around the bright 40,000-square-foot factory as they would in any plant. There are no guards, even though workers are serving time for the entire range of felonies, from stabbing friends to raping children to burning down houses. Many even wield razor knives and electric drills. "We try to run it as much like a business as possible," Mr. Borchert, 39, said above the din of sewing machines. "That's important for the mental environment of the workers. It becomes an escape for them. I guess escape is a bad word. It becomes a release for them." But Mr. Borchert and his colleagues do have to approach many standard management issues like staff motivation and training new hires from an unusual perspective. After all, they are supervising what is arguably the least traditional work force in America. It is also one of the fastest growing. About 85,000 of this country's 1.3 million inmates in federal and state prisons hold a job, including 3,500 in a federal program where they make products for private companies for interstate sale. That is up from 1,000 five years ago. Oregon is a leader in the trend, as a result of a 1994 law that requires all able-bodied prisoners to put in a 40- hour week. Eighty percent now do, one of the highest rates in the nation. After starting Prison Blues, the state contracted the program in 1997 to Array, a subsidiary of Yoshida's Inc., a company in Portland that has $75 million in annual sales from products like teriyaki sauce, golf bags and snowboards. For the managers of Prison Blues, overseeing felons has a built-in advantage: they are incredibly motivated. No matter that the work is menial and the pay paltry (the state allows them to keep only a fifth of the average $6.80 an hour that they make, with the rest going to taxes, victim restitution and other expenses); the program has a waiting list of 200, and employees are even eager to work holidays. "These jobs mean a lot to them," Mr. Borchert said. "You'll get guys who can be fairly emotional about whether or not they're able to do the job. Usually guys in an American company wouldn't express a lot of emotion about whether or not they can sew." One inmate who had failed at several jobs last year almost cried when a manager told him he was not working out, Mr. Borchert said. "He was teary-eyed. He said: `Please, I'll do anything. I'll work in the warehouse, I'll do whatever. I just can't sew.' We wrote him a letter wishing him well in future assignments. I still see that person a couple times a week. He pleads with me for his job back." No surprise there. Sewing clothes beats the dreariness and danger of prison life, and making $1.36 an hour is better than earning nothing. The workers learn skills they can use on the outside. And for many, the factory floor offers a more personal reward. "They treat you like people here," said Robert Staunton, 37, a convicted kidnapper who had never held down a job. "Some corrections officers treat you all right, but a lot of them think you're doing something wrong. These guys don't think that way. They're more business types, so it's like being on the street again." Mr. Staunton says he has saved $4,000 and sends money to his two children. Workers also spend their savings on new shoes, toiletries and tuition. They are paid by the piece. The more they make, the more they earn, although a federal law requires Array to pay at least the prevailing wage. And if the percentage of defects falls below the industry average of 3 percent, the workers are given credit to buy Prison Blues products. Even the smallest of incentives, ones that would be taken for granted on the outside, can be surprisingly effective. In the first quarter of 2000, when the percentage of defects first fell below the industry average, Mr. Borchert bought pizza for the entire floor. Many workers had not tasted a slice in five years. "They loved it," Mr. Wise said. "Not long after that happened, there was an issue that came up where several pairs of jeans were put together wrong, and some guys actually spent time on their breaks correcting these just so the percentage wouldn't rise." Prison labor has come under fire from human-rights advocates who view it as exploitation, and from labor officials who complain it takes jobs away from law-abiding Americans. But Mr. Borchert said none of his workers were forced into their jobs. And as for stealing jobs, he said it was not an issue in his company's case because "all the sewing would be going overseas if it weren't here." Supervising inmates does have its downsides. At Prison Blues, some workers show the effects of powerful drugs taken for their psychiatric disorders. Managers often have to help others deal with personal crises, like alienation from their families. And with the inmates' suspicion of authority, it often takes half a year just to win their trust. "They think at first that you're here to jerk them around," Mr. Borchert said. "You're the Man." Partly as a result, team-building is much harder than on the outside, Mr. Wise said. No inmate wants to be thought of as an informer, he said, so it is tough to get one worker to point out another's mistakes. Mr. Wise said he first learned this lesson three years ago when he asked who had botched a pair of jeans, only to get silent stares. Another headache is the high turnover rate that comes from inmates being released or transferred, often without notice. A mechanic did not show up one day last summer, for instance, and it was only after Mr. Borchett called the prison guards that he learned he had been sent to another institution for medical treatment. It took more than six months to train a replacement. "People say you have a captive work force," he said. "It's not true." Ahmed Muyingo, a Ugandan refugee convicted of domestic violence, told Mr. Hiatt recently that he was returning to court soon to reargue his case. "You should probably start training somebody," Mr. Muyingo, 40, said as he ran a pair of jeans under a sewing machine. "Are they going to let you work up until you leave?" Mr. Hiatt asked. "Probably. I like the money." None of the managers had supervised inmates before, and their weeklong training program with the Department of Corrections taught them some eye-opening lessons. They learned how criminals think (the world revolves around them), what to do in a hostage situation (do not resist) and where to frisk prisoners for contraband (under the armpits, in socks or wherever there is a bulge.) Then they stepped through the metal detectors and sliding doors on their first day, and heard the locks click shut behind them. "I was nervous," Mr. Borchert said. "You're around guys who've committed serious crimes. You don't understand the environment they live in. You don't know whether you'll be threatened with violence from day to day." "Almost without fail," he said, "for the first two to three months, I have managers looking at me with wide eyes saying, `What have I gotten myself into?' " Mr. Hiatt has a wife and four children, and took the job a year and a half ago after the shutdown of the wood-fiber mill where he had worked for 23 years. "With a lot of the inmates, I don't know their crimes," he said. "I feel if I know what their crime was, and it hits personal to me, it would interfere with the way I interact with them. Child molesting is what usually gets to me the worst." "You always have this feeling that you never let your guard down," he added, "that you're always looking over your shoulder." So while the managers have to try to respect their workers, they also remain wary of them. Mr. Hiatt's office on the floor is enclosed in a steel mesh cage, and the padlock to the gate is always kept shut to prevent a prisoner from pocketing it and using it as a weapon later. Irons are secured with cables to pillars. The 300 tools used by the workers are hung on a white Pegboard in the rear of the building. Nobody is allowed to leave if one is missing. In 1998, a worker unknowingly dropped a pair of nippers - tool No. 39 - into a box of clothing that was shipped out. Guards were called in. The factory was turned upside down. Then a doctor did a cavity search on each worker. "That worker doesn't like to handle nippers anymore," Mr. Borchert said. "No one uses No. 39 now. It's cursed. People here are careful not to associate themselves with something that has failed or something that has to do with wrongdoing." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ GANGBOX: CONSTRUCTION WORKERS NEWS SERVICE GANGBOX homepage: http://www.geocities.com/gangbox/ comments? email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "UNION NOW, UNION FOREVER" Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ Your use of Yahoo! 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