Prison Labor

Schmoozefest

Assembly line: Twenty percent of the nation's convicts work for Unicor -- at what activists call slave wages.

Expo West '96 was a classic San Francisco trade show -- for the prison industry.

By Christian Parenti

WITH GRIM IRONY, Unicor -- the government agency that runs federal prison industries -- chose San Francisco's Moscone Center as the venue for "Expo West '96," held two weeks ago.

The prison-labor industry is no longer just about making license plates. Prisoners today make stretch limousines, conduct telemarketing surveys, and enter data into computers. Convicts work with marketers and managers to maximize sales for the prison industry, and 200 of those sales genuises attended Expo West '96, to be feted and dazzled by Unicor.

According to law, Unicor can only sell products to other federal agencies. But on display were such prison-made goods as road signs, park signs, decals, mail bags, toner cartridges for copy machines, protective eyewear made to look like Miami-style sunglasses, and plenty of lightweight body armor for the Army and border-patrol agents.

"The trade show is just a chance for us to, you know, show the products, look for business just like any other company," said Unicor's Dennis Grinnioni. Unicor's business is so strong that this year it's presenting a trade show on each coast. "Normally we just do one show a year," explained another Unicor official. "Usually it's in the Midwest, somewhere like Kansas City."

But San Francisco is not Kansas City, and Expo West '96 organizers were met by 250 irate Bay Area prison activists and trade unionists who showed up to protest what they see as the "human rights violations" of Unicor and the general threat of low wages posed by prison labor.

"Oh my gosh, they're here for us," stammered a purchasing agent from the federal prosecutor's office in Omaha, Neb., as she read the crowd's picket signs. "They think we use slave labor?"

Activist Dean Tuckerman thinks so. "Prison labor is slavery, and any person, in any century, should oppose slavery." His comrades denounced convict labor through a bullhorn and burned complimentary canvas handbags given out at Unicor's registration desk.

"One of the main things driving Unicor's expansion is the nation's massive use of incarceration," said Eli Rosenblat of the Prison Resource Activist Center.

Twenty percent of the nation's 104,000 federal convicts are employed by Unicor. Moreover, the federal prison population is projected to swell to 117,000 by the end of the decade.

Security was tight inside the Moscone Center, but the registration booth was swamped by demonstrators. All non-government employees (including a 60 Minutes crew) wore identification badges and were chaperoned around the exhibit hall by Unicor representatives.

Unicor public-information agent Todd R. Craig glared at my name tag. "The Bay Guardian ?" he asked, his blue eyes narrowing. "You wrote that story about us last week. Steve Schwalb, our chief operating officer, would like to speak to some of the points you raised."

My tour with Steve Schwalb through the hall of prison-made goods kept getting delayed, so I ducked into a "motivational super session" titled "Attitude Is Everything" presented by Keith Harrell.

"If there's anybody that's not really into it, you send them to me!" said Harrell with a disingenuous smile and a sideways glance at two unimpressed protesters in the front row.

"Everyone is going through changes! If you're not changing you're in a rut! Dig yourself out!" shouted Harrell, feigning a shoveling motion. "Everybody's going through so many changes; downsizing, rightsizing, some of them even capsizing. I went to a company the other day that said, 'We just laid off a thousand. Can ya motivate the rest of them?' "

When we started our tour, Schwalb confirmed that Unicor provides 25 percent of the federal government's office chairs, 50 percent of the federal government's brooms and paintbrushes, 20 percent of its electrical harnesses, 20 percent of the electrical wiring used by federal contractors, and all the bulletproof vests worn by border-patrol agents.

For small-business and labor unions in the federal-supply industry, giving up 25 percent of federal government work orders for chairs is a major sacrifice. Activists also cite reports in lawsuits and letters from federal inmates alleging routine safety violations in Unicor shops.

I was drawn to the bulletproof-vest display. The irony of prisons building body armor for law enforcement doesn't seem to hit these earnest federal shoppers. A purchasing agent from the U.S. Patent Office walked by. Her shirt read: "Yes, I am black. No, I am not a criminal

This article was one of the first times that I was introduced to the truth about our prison systems hidden agenda. That was eight years ago. Every year when I go to UNICOR’S WebPages and see that they’re financial projections for the following year has doubled from their projections of the year before. I get a knot in my stomach because the only way for them to make more profit is to produce more merchandise and the only way to do that is to imprison more people.

And so far they have been very successful, and why wouldn’t they be? The only way you can buy stock in UNICOR is by invitation and to get invited you must be part of the judicial system, judges, DA’s, law enforcement or congress. How could they not be successful when the people that make the laws, enforce the laws and hand down the prison sentences are stockholders?

Anyone who thinks this does not effect them are fools. Never underestimate the power of GREED. Don’t wait until someone you love becomes victim to UNICOR to do something.

Dodi jones