Inmates at the Lithgow Correctional Centre in New South Wales are being paid a ninth of the minimum wage to make “trendy” tea towels as part of a deal between the state government and a Blue Mountains small business.
It would take the prisoners at least 14 hours to earn enough to be able to afford one of the tea towels that they are making as part of the prison labour.
The NSW Department of Justice recently revealed on its Facebook page that inmates at the prison were making products for a Blue Mountains homewares company. It’s one of many contracts that state governments have entered into with private companies for prison labour, with inmates paid a fraction of the minimum wage for the work.
NSW prisoners are paid a maximum of $17.82 per week for 30 hours of work making the tea towels, which retail for $37.
The homewares company is one of numerous Australian private sector firms using prison labour to make or refurbish its products with prisoners getting paid at most one-ninth of the minimum wage.
Prison labour is a for-profit business in Australia, with state governments raking in millions of dollars through contracts with external companies.
Just this month it was revealed by The Age that the Victorian government had suggested using prison labour to pick fruit on farms in regional Victoria, something that was rejected only because the farmers railed against the concept.
Every state and territory government requires prisoners to complete work if they are able to and of a certain age. This typically includes internal work to make the prison “sustainable”, such as in the kitchen or laundry, along with work for external companies that enter into contracts with the relevant department.
This is a lucrative industry for state governments. In 2016-17 the NSW Corrective Services Industries generated revenue of $128.9 million, with a trading profit of $50.4 million. The equivalent in the Northern Territory made a $2 million profit in 2014.
The NSW government is by far the most transparent about the prison labour undertaken in its jails, often spruiking this on Facebook page and displaying the range of industries involved on its website.
Offering “competitive pricing” and workers who “relish labour intensive business opportunities”, prisoners in NSW work in textiles, furniture, printing services, engineering, refurbishment and housing.
They make products including hospital linen, Australian flags and security fencing and repair shavers, kettles and toasters.
Inmates in a women’s prison in the state also refurbish and repackage airline headsets for the major airlines in the country.
This is all done for payment far below the minimum wage. The NSW government said that at most an inmate in the state can be paid $80.73 per week for 30 hours of work. This equates to an hourly wage of $2.70, a ninth of the minimum wage.
The lowest a prisoner is paid in NSW is $17.82 per week for 30 hours of work, equalling 60 cents per hour.
Prisoners in the state have even been contracted to build modular, “pop-up” prisons to be used as part of the Victorian prison expansion.
In Victoria, all prisoners under the age of 65 are required to work while they are incarcerated. Prisons in the state have contracts with companies operating in metal fabrication, timber, agriculture, and horticulture, and are paid at three different levels, with 20 percent of their earnings withheld until they are released.
The state government does not reveal how much prisoners are paid for this work, but former inmates have said they are paid between $3 and $6 per day.
The Western Australian government has the Prisoner Employment Program where inmates in minimum security facilities are engaged in paid employment. Acacia Prison, a private facility in the state run by Serco, also has a number of contracts with outside companies for prison labour.
Serco must pay the state government 10 percent of its profits from these contracts, and the company recently reported paying $110,011 to the WA government, making its revenue at about $1.2 million per year.
Denham Sadler is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne. He covers politics and technology regularly for InnovationAus, and writes about other issues, including criminal justice, for publications including The Guardian and The Saturday Paper. He is also the senior editor of The Justice Map, a project to strengthen advocacy for criminal justice reform in Australia. You can follow him on Twitter.
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