Working prisoners are entitled to the same employment and safety standards as everyone else

By: Jordan House brock university

The Canadian Corrections Service (CSC) recently ended its longstanding relationship with meat processing company Wallace Beef.

This means federal prisoners held at the Joyceville facility near Kingston will no longer provide slaughterhouse labor to private companies.

The announcement comes after years of campaigning by animal rights and prison farm activists. Groups like Evolve Our Prison Farms have long criticized the Joyceville slaughterhouse for being cruel to animals and exploiting prisoners. They also raised many concerns about lax oversight of operations and poor environmental practices.

CSC has not yet announced whether it will seek new contractors, but the time is long past for Canada to rethink its approach to prison labor, whatever happens to the Joyceville slaughterhouse.

As Halifax lawyer Asaf Rashid and I argue in our new book, Solidarity Beyond Prisons: Unionizing Prison Laborthere are no legal or moral arguments for denying prisoners their rights as workers.

work as rehab

According to the law and corrections policy, Canadian prisoners work as part of their rehabilitation, not as punishment. He has two main forms of this labor.

The first is facility maintenance. Inmates perform many of the cooking, cleaning, clerical, and other tasks necessary for the day-to-day operations of the prison in which they are held. Some work in prison industries designed to give prisoners a “work-like” experience.

The federal prison industry is operated by CORCAN, a special operating agency of the Canadian Corrections Service. Among other activities, prisoners working for CORCAN produce office furniture and textiles, operate construction, printing and laundry services, and work on one of the few remaining prison farms in Canada.

The issue of prison labor in this country is well known by the government. Canada’s federal prison watchdog, the Office of Corrections and Investigations (OCI), regularly warns of her plans to hire CSC. In a recent report, correctional agent Ivan Zinger highlighted employment and wage discrimination, especially against black prisoners.

The year before, Singer noted the inadequacy of CORCAN’s programs for women, stating that “women’s jobs are often based on gender roles and expectations, and offer few marketable skills.” No,” he pointed out.

The OCI 2019-2020 report clearly states:

“Very few of the industries in which CORCAN operates provide training or teach skills that are job-related or meet labor market demands. We’ve been maintaining it, so these problems seem unsolvable.”

return of wages

Salary is also an important issue. In 2013, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government introduced new room and board and miscellaneous charges equating to a 30% wage clawback and abolished the incentive he pays for CORCAN work.

In announcing the new rates, the government ignored the fact that the federal prisoner’s pay scale, implemented in 1981, already allowed for room and board deductions. The maximum wage for federal prisoners is $6.90 per day, minus mandatory fees.

Since these changes, the average wage for full-time prisoners is about 30 cents an hour, according to the OCI. Meanwhile, the cost of living in prisons is skyrocketing as more and more costs are downloaded to prisoners, including the cost of basic hygiene items.

The letters and phone calls that inmates need to maintain community relationships also require money and are seen favorably by parole boards when making decisions. Moreover, researchers and inmates themselves believe that low wages impede inmates’ ability to successfully reintegrate into society after release (e.g., avoiding crime out of economic necessity) and ultimately reduce public safety. warns.

Prison work, like any other work, can be dangerous and unhealthy.

no labor rights

However, prisoners are generally excluded from health and safety laws to protect workers, just as they are excluded from employment standards and labor laws.

There is no public safety justification for excluding on-duty prisoners from normal employment and health and safety protection, let alone moral reasons. There is absolutely no reason to limit the labor rights of prisoners.

Unions for prisoners may seem far-fetched, but they have historical precedent. In 1977, state prisoners working in a privately run slaughterhouse at the Guelph Correctional Center in Ontario formed a union and gained full worker rights. The union lasted nearly 20 years before being moved from the prison compound as part of a corporate merger.

As OCI and other critics have made clear, the Federal Prison Work Plan is failing prisoners and the general public. Looking ahead, CSC should seriously consider this success from the past. All workers are entitled to full rights and protection.

Jordan House, Assistant Professor, Labor Studies, brock university

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Please read the original article.