In The News

Workplace travesty
The Dothan Eagle ( Dothan, Alabama)
Editorial
September 19, 2012

Recently, American Power Source, an apparel manufacturing company that makes military uniforms at plants in Fayette, located in northwest Alabama, and in Columbus, Miss., announced its plants would close in October after its government contract expires.

In the global economy, Alabama has lost thousands of textile jobs to overseas plants where labor is cheap; the loss of a few hundred more jobs should come as no surprise.

However, these jobs aren’t going overseas. They’re going to federal prison inmates in the United States.

Unemployment is bad enough without the federal government allowing jobs to be snatched from the private sector and moved into prisons. The contract once held by American Power Source now belongs to Federal Prison Industries, which employs inmates to perform the jobs for as little as 23 cents an hour.

The 1930 law that gives FPI the right of first refusal on government contracts was well-intentioned at the time. Its goal was to provide work training for inmates so they may have trade skills upon their release. Hopefully, gainful employment would discourage recidivism.

However, this situation has nothing to do with training and everything to do with cheap labor. The textile manufacturing industry in the United States unraveled after the passage of NAFTA. Few plants remain. The notion that having inmates fulfill this contract gives them job skills is simply indefensible; textile work is a dying trade domestically.

In the long run, Congress should revisit the laws regulating prison labor.

However, the present situation should be examined with an eye toward keeping American workers on the job.

We applaud a local woman, Pamela Dent of Slocomb, for doing all she can to draw attention to this travesty.

“What they have done is take taxpayers’ jobs and give them to criminals,” Dent said. “That, in itself, is criminal in my opinion.”

Well said, Pamela Dent.

Congress, are you listening?