Silver Taube: Proposition 6 would ban forced labor in jails and prisons

In the November election, Californians will vote on a ballot measure, Proposition 6, that would amend California’s Constitution and ban forced labor in jails and prison, one of the last remnants of slavery.

If Proposition 6 passes, inmates could not be forced to work. Prop 6 does not increase wages. Compensation for any work assignment in state prison is set by the Secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, while compensation for any work assignment in county and city jail programs are set by local ordinance. Prop 6 does, however, save taxpayers money by removing barriers to rehabilitative programming that’s proven to decrease recidivism, decrease victimization and therefore improve public safety.

The constitutional amendment is one of 14 bills the California Legislative Black Caucus prioritized this year from a state reparations task force in 2023.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a separate law that will take effect if voters pass the ballot measure and would empower prisons to create voluntary work programs. The law does not contain a new pay scale.

An ACLU report, Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers, explores the use of prison labor nationwide. The report notes that inmates earn, on average, between 13 cents and 52 cents per hour nationwide, and that nationally, incarcerated workers produce more than $2 billion per year in goods and more than $9 billion per year in services for the maintenance of the prisons.

Prison labor is part of the food supply chain of companies that include Aldi, Costco, Kroger, Target, Walmart and Whole Foods; Burger King, Chipotle, Domino’s, McDonald’s; Cargill, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Pepsi and Tyson according to an Associated Press investigation. The investigators found that prisoners make pennies or no money while prisons and companies make tens of millions of dollars of profits.

The reporters looked though public information requests in all 50 states and followed nearly $200 million of goods and livestock from harvest to sales for six years. Prisoners, who are disproportionately Black, have died and lost limbs on the job and have been abused by the prison staff.

Incarcerated workers with minimal experience or training are often assigned hazardous work in unsafe conditions and without standard protective gear, leading to preventable injuries and deaths. California reported more than 600 injuries in its state prison industry program over a four-year period. Because of poor data collection, this number is likely an underestimate.

Workplace health and safety laws exempt inmates from the protections that almost all other workers enjoy. Since they are not considered employees under the law, inmates don’t have the same rights to strike or form unions.

A 126-page lawsuit filed by current and former incarcerated Black Alabamians, unions and civil rights organizations alleges Alabama prisoners have been entrapped in a system of convict leasing in which incarcerated people are forced to work, often for little or no money, for the benefit of the numerous government entities and private businesses that employ them.

“Slavery has not been abolished,” Curtis Davis, who was imprisoned for more than 25 years in the Louisiana state penitentiary and now advocates against forced prison labor, told the Associated Press. “It is still operating in present tense.”

It’s past time to abolish all forms of slavery in California, including in prisons.

San José Spotlight columnist Ruth Silver Taube is supervising attorney of the Workers’ Rights Clinic at the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center, supervising attorney of the Santa Clara County’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement Legal Advice Line and a member of Santa Clara County’s Fair Workplace Collaborative. Her columns appear every second Thursday of the month. Contact her at [email protected].