91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳

By Ben Alterman CASTLEMAINE — Jeff Kennett's economic rationalism has seen some repugnant transformations: hospitals turned into market squares, public co-ed schools into elite private girls' colleges, public parkland into private race tracks, railways into tollways and ambulances into thin air. But very little has been said — or heard — about the transformation of Kennett's soon-to-be-privatised prison system into factory complexes churning out cheaply-made goods to be sold at highly-profitable retail prices. These products are made for privately-owned companies in deals brokered through the Victorian Prison Industries Commission (VicPic). The justification which allows private industry to use cut-price prison labour, when there is something like 10% unemployment outside of the prison walls, is that under VicPic guidelines only work which would normally be done overseas is permitted in prison factories. At a wage of $5.50 a day, prison labourers are paid five times as much as the average Indonesian worker and about two and a half times as much as a Filipino. This, and the fact that prison labourers aren't worked to the state of exhaustion, makes it hard to believe that we are doing overseas labourers out of a job and not local workers. Companies, without a large enough order to warrant building and tooling a new factory in one of the neo-colonies, and not content to make an astronomical profit from local labour with its eroded pay and conditions, have been given a virtually wageless work place by their best friend Kennett. One such factory is at Loddon prison. It has a metal factory with light engineering, textiles, carpentry, upholstery and packaging 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳, and employs around 110 workers. Some of the companies taking advantage of Lodden prison factory are: Dalsonware, which sells folding tables; Skye Trading, which sells the Pro-series weight training work-out benches; and Wrekair, which buys dilapidated chairs, sends them to Loddon to be repainted and re-upholstered (at about half the going commercial rate), then hires them out to corporate, government or private functions at such low rates that half a dozen hirings generally covers the refurbishment costs. The giant German automotive parts manufacturer Bosch is also making use of Loddon prison labour to manufacture solonoids and their accompanying parts which make up approximately $60 of the value of the Bosch starter motor. In a reasonable week's production Loddon's workshop produces around 2000 solonoids and about 5000 bags of the accompanying parts at a combined value of more than $150,000. Considering that the weekly wages bill of the 20 or so prisoners employed there is about $550, Bosch is making a much higher profit than it would if it had to employ skilled and semi-skilled technicians from outside the prison system. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. When Corrections Corporation of Australia and Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) take charge of the new private prisons they will not only get paid more than $14 million a year to run them, but will also be given a free hand with the industries — and the profits — in those prisons. The Wackenhut Corporation, the US parent company of ACM which is building and planning to run the new private 600-bed prison at Sale in Victoria, is currently under investigation by the FBI and Texas rangers for misappropriating US$1 million supplied by the Texas state department of criminal justice. The unfortunate inmates of these private prisons look set to become nothing more than profit-inducing units of labour for yet another of Kennett's unscrupulous corporate buddies.