Some unions have joined incarcerated workers and local community partners in demanding justice. Let's all do it.

Certain unions took a huge step yesterday and I hope that more unions and the AFL-CIO will follow their lead and undertake similar initiatives in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

The AFL-CIO has announced that "(O)n Tuesday, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union-UFCW (RWDSU-UFCW) and the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), who are members of SEIU, joined incarcerated workers and local community partners to file a class-action lawsuit in response to the systemic exploitation and forced labor of Alabama’s incarcerated population. The suit, strongly supported by the AFL-CIO, outlines how the Alabama Department of Corrections denies Black Alabamians parole at twice the rate of their White counterparts in order to maintain a cheap labor force through wrongful detention. And though Black Alabamians are only a quarter of the state’s residents, they make up over 50% of the incarcerated population."

The AFL-CIO announcement went on to say that "Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and state Attorney General Steve Marshall are named as defendants in the lawsuit and are accused of acting as knowing architects of a “modern-day form of slavery” scheme that generates $450 million annually for the state, all on the backs of unpaid incarcerated workers. In a virtual press conference, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond said, 'Fighting to abolish forced labor is a priority for the AFL-CIO and the American labor movement. And we won’t rest until this corrupt, immoral scheme ends for good.'"

For generations the AFL-CIO and most of mainstream labor has supported the construction of more prisons, even when construction was not viable and exploited prisoners and their families and the communities the prisons were built in. We have tended to look at jails, prisons and other forms of incarceration only through the eyes of corrections and probation officers, construction workers who want the work building prisons and and jails, sometimes as part of our fight against privatization. We have not analyzed or come to grips with some other realities.

The incarcerated are mostly working-class people. Their numbers include many union members who were putting in a full day of work but still living from paycheck to paycheck and trying to get by in a system in which the odds are stacked against them. We have union members who are houseless, members who are veterans who face certain risks that others do not face and a lack of social supports to help them, Black members who are more likely than whites to be singled out for scrutiny and harassment by the police and others, many young members who come from cultures that are at odds with law enforcement, and many members who have been hurt on the job and who have been prescribed painkillers and have become addicted and who self-medicate. All of these union siblings can end up in jails or prisons quite easily.

The numbers of the incarcerated are growing, their plight and the exploitation they experience is getting worse, these are working-class people, there is a disproportionate effect here on communities of color, and mass incarceration and exploitation and racism work against building a strong labor movement.

Many unions have connections to service programs for our union siblings before they end up in jails or prisons or psych wards, and these program do great work, but I am not aware of any unions using our resources to defend or support our members while they are incarcerated or support their families. The question of the civil rights of the incarcerated does not touch our unions in positive ways. We took a big step a few years ago when a few building trades unions began helping some incarcerated union siblings be apprenticeship-ready when leaving prison. For that matter, when we are a part of CTEC and other programs in the schools we are building a school-to-union or school-to-democracy pipeline and not aiding and abetting the school-to-prison pipeline so many young people get stuck in. All of those programs are potentially part of a map for us.

If the announcement above is accurate, and if Labor doesn't drop the ball, a great step is being taken here, and one that we should build on and link to our good programs that help some of the incarcerated enter apprenticeships and that aid our members before they end up in the prison pipeline. We need one unified approach that helps everyone more forward.

Image taken from a report by Mansa Musa that appeared on The Real News

 Network on September 5, 2022.

(These are not the opinions of the Marion-Polk-Yamhill Central Labor Chapter or the Oregon AFL-CIO.)