Colorado replaces immigrant workers with prison (slave) labor

Posted by Joshua Holland at 12:04 PM on March 1, 2007.

L.A. Times:

Ever since passing what its Legislature promoted as the nation's toughest laws against illegal immigration last summer, Colorado has struggled with a labor shortage as migrants fled the state. This week, officials announced a novel solution: Use convicts as farmworkers.

The Department of Corrections hopes to launch a pilot program this month -- thought to be the first of its kind -- that would contract with more than a dozen farms to provide inmates who will pick melons, onions and peppers.

Crops were left to spoil in the fields after the passage of legislation that required state identification to get government services and allowed police to check suspects' immigration status.

"The reason this [program] started is to make sure the agricultural industry wouldn't go out of business," state Rep. Dorothy Butcher said. Her district includes Pueblo, near the farmland where the inmates will work.

Prisoners who are a low security risk may choose to work in the fields, earning 60 cents a day. They also are eligible for small bonuses.

The inmates will be watched by prison guards, who will be paid by the farms. The cost is subject to negotiation, but farmers say they expect to pay more for the inmate labor and its associated costs than for their traditional workers.

Advocates on both sides of the immigration debate said they were stunned by the proposal.

"If they can't get slaves from Mexico, they want them from the jails," said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which favors restrictions on immigration.

Ricardo Martinez of the Denver immigrant rights group Padres Unidos asked: "Are we going to pull in inmates to work in the service industry too? You won't have enough inmates -- unless you start importing them from Texas."

Farmers said they weren't happy with the solution, but their livelihoods are on the verge of collapse.

"This prison labor is not a cure for the immigration problem; it's just a Band-Aid," farmer Joe Pisciotta said.

He said he needed to be sure he would have enough workers for the harvest this fall before he planted watermelons, onions and pumpkins on his 700-acre farm in Avondale. But he's not thrilled with the idea of criminals working his fields.

"I've got young kids," he said. "It's something I've got to think about."

I'm always struck by the idea that if immigrant labor didn't exist, firms would start paying high wages and offering benefits to entice natives into plucking chickens and picking lettuce. If you believe that, you haven't been paying attention to America's corporate culture. Decent wages and benefits come from collective bargaining.

There's the rub. According to a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, "From 1983 to 2006, unionization rates among African-Americans dropped from 31.7 to 16.0 percent. Unionization rates also dropped among whites (from 22.2 to 13.3 percent) and Hispanics (24.2 to 11.4 percent) during the same period." Those are overall unionization rates, which don't even get to the whole picture: many government employees belong to a union, and the private sector unionization rates are lower still.

All of which is to say that if people who are concerned about the status of working people put half as much energy into supporting this as they do into hatin' on the immigrants, we might really get somewhere.

Tagged as: labor, immigration, colorado, prison system

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.