Major labor unions have linked with Black communities in Alabama and area civil rights organizations to denounce a statewide prison-work release program that they say is basically enslaving incarcerated workers.
In a new federal class action lawsuit filed December 12 against the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), current and formerly incarcerated Alabamians claim the state’s prison system remains as infamous as it was at the turn of the 20th century: “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.
“They live in a constant danger of being murdered, stabbed, or raped that is so profound that the federal government has sued Alabama for inflicting cruel and unusual punishment, and if they refuse to work, the State punishes them even more. They are trapped in this labor trafficking scheme.”
Those statements are from the introduction to the class action complaint filed by 10 plaintiffs: Robert Earl Council (a.k.a. Kinetik Justice), Lee Edward Moore Jr., Lakiera Walker, Jerame Apprentice Cole, Frederick Denard McDole, Michael Campbell, Arthur Charles Ptomey Jr., Lanair Pritchett, Alimireo English, and Toni Cartwright. Their complaint alleges that while imprisoned, inmates––over half of whom are Black––are being forced to work long hours in jobs where they are leased out to the franchisees of major companies like Budweiser, McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, and Wendy’s.
Although companies pay employees at the prevailing wage, Alabama takes out fees for transportation to and from work, laundering of clothes, and other incidentals from inmates’ work-release wages. Those fees can total up to 40% of a paycheck, often leaving inmate workers earning only $2.06 an hour. The prison-work program is generating $450 million for the state, lawyers for the plaintiffs say.
When inmates refuse to work, they claim they are punished with more time in prison and often threatened with physical attacks, which can sometimes lead to death.
“Today, in the 21st century, the state of Alabama has resurrected this highly profitable system of convict leasing,” said Janet Herold, legal director of Justice Catalyst Law, which is representing current and former inmates, during the press conference announcing the lawsuit. “We are not talking here today about a new Jim Crow. We’re talking here about the old Jim Crow. Gov. Kay Ivey, Attorney General Steve Marshall, and the Alabama Department of Corrections coerced labor and sustained this forced labor scheme by maintaining brutal, horrific conditions inside state prisons, and directly and often severely punishing anyone who refuses to work or even anyone who encourages people to refuse work.
“Since 2018, they have grown this forced labor system by replacing evidence-based parole decision-making with a highly discriminatory parole system that favors white people over Black people for lease at a rate of 2-to-1.
“The suit we filed alleges this forced labor scheme violates the U.S. Constitution, the Alabama Constitution, and a host of federal laws, including the Ku Klux Klan Act and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. What we see today in Alabama is a system that implicates some of the largest private employers in the world.”
The plaintiffs are being supported in their lawsuit by The Woods Foundation (TWF), a nonprofit that fights wrongful convictions in Alabama; the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU); Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW); and AFL-CIO.
Forced, unpaid labor
Alabama’s prison system infamously prospered from a forced convict leasing system from 1846 through 1928. Black people were routinely arrested, sent to prison, and then hired out to work for local employers who paid the prison for their labor. Even after the leasing program was outlawed, the state worked inmates in chain gangs that employed them on public works projects for years.
This new class action lawsuit aims to stop Alabama from prolonging the imprisonment of inmates and force it to grant all eligible paroles, as well as compensate workers who have been exploited.
A few of the lawsuit plaintiffs sent audio and video statements for the press call.
Lakiera Walker said that when she was imprisoned, she worked at a SouthEastern Meats warehouse: “It was a freezer. We worked from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m., 12 hours a day, with no sufficient clothing to accommodate this job. Some days, you were freezing, freezing cold. It was between 30 and 40 degrees inside. And if you didn’t work, you would risk going back to the prison or getting a ‘disciplinary.’”
Walker worked like this for years, she said, because, like others, she didn’t want to jeopardize her chances of being able to see her family during visitations, receive phone calls, or visit the canteen. “You did what you had to do to survive. And I did that for 15 years. And I just—I want it to be different. I’m out, but my heart is still there with my friends and family who have to suffer and try to get through it.”
Plenty of inmates in ADOC want to speak out about the forced work conditions they face, but they fear retaliation, she added.
Alimireo English, a plaintiff who has been incarcerated for 13 years, said one reason the imprisoned remain behind bars is because their labor benefits prison staff. “Inmates and maintenance have keys to [the] gates and doors, work 12 to 14 hours, and still be on call, getting paid only peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and leftovers from their supervisor’s lunch,” he said. “I personally oversee an entire dorm of 190 men [who were] being looted, robbed, and abused before I took over and implemented structure and began enforcing the rules of the faith dorm…, which I also helped rewrite this year. My work allows the prison administration to use their limited staff to [take care of] the more unstructured dorms or give relief and days off for the stressed employees.”
RWDSU, one of the labor unions that joined the lawsuit, termed this case a fight for social and economic justice that merges with a fight for racial justice. “What’s happening in Alabama is one of the most egregious violations of the rights of Black workers happening today, incarcerated or not,” said Adam Obernauer, RWDSU’s director of organizing. “When workers cannot control and sell their labor or wage, then it is slavery––period. But let me be crystal clear: Forced and unpaid labor is never acceptable. Alabama’s shameful modern-day slavery scheme is a clear violation of human rights. When labor is owned by others, rather than the workers [who] produce the labor, they’re simply unable to attain rights owed to them in this country.”