...Prison bread
(From Page 1)
pact the private sector. Prison-made
baked goods have been displacing
goods made by law-abiding workers on
the outside, such as the unionized
workers at Franz Bakery, which has op-
erations in Oregon and Washington.
That rankles Terry Lansing, secre-
tary-treasurer of 1,160-member Bakers
Local 114. Lansing says in the compe-
tition for school district business, Cor-
rectional Industries is undercutting
family-owned Franz, a union employer
since 1910.
Inmates at the Airway Heights bak-
ery don’t pay taxes. They can’t union-
ize. And they’re paid 55 cents to $1.75
an hour for their work. [The state takes
up to 90 percent of that for crime victim
restitution, legal obligations, costs of in-
carceration, and savings for when
they’re released.]
At Franz, by contrast, workers earn
$19 to $24 an hour, with fully-paid
medical and pension benefits, a guar-
anteed work week, and overtime pay
after seven hours in a day.
“These are jobs we want to pre-
serve,” Lansing said. “[Our members]
are taxpayers, and our taxes support the
school districts.”
In a 2010 interview with the Labor
Press, Franz Spokane-area general
manager Tim Harper wouldn’t disclose
the dollar amount or volume of busi-
PAGE 2
ness lost, but said it’s significant.
“We definitely had to make cutbacks
because of it,” Harper said.
Harper said 2009 was the first
school year that Franz didn’t have the
contract for Central Valley School Dis-
trict in Spokane. Employees at the
Franz bakery in Spokane had children
in the district, and were outraged about
the switch to prison-made bread,
Harper said. They spoke out at PTA
meetings but got nowhere.
Franz competes with the prison bak-
ery for school district contracts, but the
company has been reluctant to go pub-
lic criticizing the prison bakery. One
Who’s eating prison-
made baked goods?
The following school districts
serve baked goods produced at
Airway Heights Correctional Fa-
cility:
Auburn School District
Highline School District
Federal Way School District
South Kitsap School District
Blaine School District
Spokane School District #81
Mead School District
Central Valley School District
Mt. View School District
reason is that Food Services of Amer-
ica, which distributes the prison-made
bread to schools, is an important Franz
customer. Also, Franz doesn’t want to
publicly criticize the school districts for
buying prison bread, since the company
hopes to win back their business.
But Lansing, at the Bakers union, is
free to speak his mind. He has one
question for the districts: “Do the par-
ents know you’re feeding their kids
prison bread?”
For over a year, Lansing has cam-
paigned against serving prison-made
baked goods in schools.
“I am positive that most parents
would not allow a time-serving convict
into their kitchen to prepare their child’s
meals, yet I believe that is what your
School District is doing,” Lansing
wrote in a letter to the Clatskanie
School District.
In letters to the districts, Lansing
raises concerns about safety and the
ethics of forced labor.
Wiles, at Correctional Industries,
has answers to some of those charges.
The labor is not forced, she says. In-
mates must take part in some kind of
rehabilitative program, but they don’t
have to work specifically at Correc-
tional Industries. They can take classes
or take part in treatment instead. In-
mates can receive prison discipline for
refusing some prison jobs, like clean-
ing, but they can’t be disciplined for re-
fusing to work in the bakery or other
Correctional Industries enterprises.
(Turn to Page 7)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
ATU #757 voices race
concerns at TriMet
A report commissioned
by the union finds
minority employees
more likely to be
disciplined.
Amalgamated Transit Union Local
(ATU) 757 is publicly calling out its
biggest employer, TriMet, over how
the transit agency treats minority em-
ployees.
About a year and a half ago, the
union contracted with Stephen John-
son, a sociologist and statistician, to an-
alyze TriMet disciplinary data to see if
there was evidence of disparate treat-
ment. Johnson and fellow researcher
Christine McCaslin looked at TriMet
data from 2000 to 2009. They found
that minority employees made up about
17 percent of the TriMet workforce, but
accounted for 24 percent of the disci-
plinary actions over that time. In nine
of the 10 years, minority employees
were more likely to be disciplined than
their numbers would have suggested.
“We don’t know why,” Local 757
attorney Susan Stoner told the Labor
Press. “We just noticed there seemed
to be a disproportionate amount of dis-
cipline of minority employees.” That
led Local 757 to commission the re-
port, Stoner said.
According to Johnson’s report, over
the 10 year-period, of the 226 employ-
ees terminated for cause, 62 were mi-
norities; and of the 1,585 who received
some form of discipline, 381 were mi-
norities. In the termination cases, the
most common reasons cited were poor
job attendance and time lost at work.
The report acknowledges that discrim-
ination is notoriously difficult to docu-
ment. But it concluded that some form
of further investigation might be war-
ranted.
Earlier this year, Local 757 made
the report available to several lawyers
representing clients in discrimination
lawsuits against TriMet. TriMet was
given a copy in late spring. Now the
union is publishing it on its web site,
atu757.org.
TriMet spokesperson Mary Fetsch
said she hadn’t seen the report, but said
the agency would welcome a dialogue
with the union about it.
Fetsch also disputed the notion that
TriMet would treat employees differ-
ently based on race.
“We’re an equal opportunity em-
ployer, and we make no race-based
distinctions in employment decisions,”
Fetsch told the Labor Press.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2011