We expect this kind of thing in China, and yet somehow, one of the nation's best known brands with quite a good image, has been profiting from the labor of Colorado's prison inmates since 2011:
Whole Foods will stop selling products made using a prison labor program after a protest at one of its stores in Texas.
The company said the products should be out of its stores by April 2016, if not sooner. Whole Foods said it has sold tilapia, trout and goat cheese produced through a Colorado inmate program at some stores since at least 2011.
They have princinples, but none that can
trump profit. (Did you
have to do that? -ed.)
In theory, I'd say it's a good thing to train those we've incracerated. And if they are creating something that is sold, they should get paid for their labor.
The tilapia, trout and cheese in question come through Colorado Correctional Industries, a division of Colorado's department of corrections. On its website, CCI says its mission is to train inmates with skills and work ethics that help them secure employment after release.
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In a statement released Thursday, CCI expressed disappointment about Whole Foods' decision to stop selling the products.
"CCI offender employees are taught the value of a hard day's work," CCI said in the release. "They learn accountability and integrity. The slightest misstep can mean the removal of the offender from the program. These offenders learn to work as a team, to accomplish a mission, and they receive pride of accomplishment in knowing their efforts are impacting the outside world around them."
Dennis Dunsmoor, director of the program, said the program doesn't provide goods directly to Whole Foods, but that its partners do. He said inmates who volunteer for the program are paid 74 cents to $4 a day, and are eligible for performance bonuses.
If the products they make are going to one of the nation's
best known and profitable retailers, then the laborers who help produce them, whether they are in prison, in China, in the Gulf or anywhere, should
make a fair wage and have all the legal protections of any laborer here in the U.S.
Inmate work is typically used for government needs, such as the production of license plates or office furniture for state agencies, said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice research and advocacy group. But he said several states have programs where prisons contract with private companies.
Mauer said the programs can benefit inmates by giving them productive work and training in useful skills, but that there's potential for exploitation, since companies typically pay far less for prison labor than they otherwise would.
Those Colorado prisoners should be making double, triple that $4 per hour to help Whole Foods make its increasing profits.
As it is, this was just one more way for Whole Foods to fool its customers, by pretending it's a progressive, enlightened company while it exploits workers on a daily basis.