Home > News > Message to Members > UC-AFT Council Unanimously Endorses Statement on Prison Labor and in Commemoration of the 10th Anniversary of the 2016 Prison Strike (Sept. 9, 2026)

UC-AFT Council Unanimously Endorses Statement on Prison Labor and in Commemoration of the 10th Anniversary of the 2016 Prison Strike (Sept. 9, 2026)

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Circular logo reads "University Council - American Federation of Teachers - United for a Better UC" with silhouette of state of California with torch in the middle.

 

On Labor Day, members of the UC-AFT Statewide Council unanimously endorsed the following statement written by UCR member-leader James Anderson, in commemoration of the 2016 Prison Strike. The powerful statement of solidarity affirms the principals that incarcerated people organized and mobilized for in 2016 and advance the struggle for justice behind bars:

  1. we believe incarcerated workers should have the right to organize, unionize, collectively bargain, strike and to freely choose not to work all without coercion or fear of reprisal.
  2. we believe incarcerated workers should be compensated at no less than the federal minimum wage or the minimum wage established in their state—and preferably at the prevailing wage for the given sector—in addition to receiving standard overtime pay.

We thank James for his leadership.

 

 

 

Statement on Prison Labor and in Commemoration of the 10th Anniversary of the 2016 Prison Strike

This September 9 marks the 10th anniversary of the 2016 nationally coordinated prison strike, an unprecedented cross-state work stoppage that took place on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising. By withdrawing labor en masse, in addition to demonstrating and otherwise disrupting carceral business as usual, incarcerated workers circa 2016 sought to compel an end to coerced, unpaid and woefully undercompensated prison labor. 

The strike came in response to a call to end prison slavery,1 and it reflected the consciousness of incarcerated persons who educated the broader public about the relationships between chattel slavery, exploitative wage labor and the functions of a penal system that disproportionately ensnares Black, Latinx and indigenous persons along with those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.2 Those populations were heavily targeted during the era of hyperincarceration that came as a repressive response to the wave of social movements in the sixties and seventies,3 which included prisoners organizing, seeking to unionize and otherwise demanding their humanity be recognized.4 Targeting people of color and poorer populations via the “war on drugs” also served to pack the prisons. According to John Ehrlichman, one of the advisors to Richard Nixon, circa 1968 their “enemies” were “the antiwar left and black people,” and they realized they “couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily,” they “could disrupt those communities, “arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.”5 The relaunched “war on drugs” during Reagan’s presidency resulted in a racialized explosion in imprisonment rates. The number of people incarcerated in the US went from about half a million in 1980 to about 2.5 million by 2009, and the prison population in California increased about 500 percent between the early eighties and the turn of the millennium.6 

In 2016, prisoners with the Free Alabama Movement, the Free Ohio Movement, and the End Prison Slavery in Texas Campaign, along with a plethora of others acting in solidarity if sometimes autonomously, self-organized and helped create a nationwide movement that involved as many as 60,000 incarcerated persons and impacted 46 or more prisons and jails in some two dozen states. Imprisoned and outside members of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, an outgrowth of a longstanding labor union, the Industrial Workers of the World, also helped spread word of the strike and facilitated coordination across state lines. 

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the prison strike, we would like to reaffirm what many prisoners organized and mobilized for in 2016 and advance the struggle for justice behind bars.

First, we believe incarcerated workers should have the right to organize, unionize, collectively bargain, strike and to freely choose not to work all without coercion or fear of reprisal. 

The overwhelming majority of incarcerated workers are not covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 nor by the National Labor Relations Act. They are also not covered by the minimum health and safety standards established by the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) As a result, they are excluded from protection against employment-related discrimination, denied the right to collectively bargain to improve the conditions under which they work, and regularly subject to working conditions that are hazardous and unsafe.7 

Hundreds of prisoners in California could attest to the consequences. Logs from the California Prison Industry Authority suggest imprisoned employees reported more than 600 injuries—including crushed, lacerated and amputated body parts—over a four-year period that ended the year the nationally coordinated strike took place.8

In 2016, prisoners faced severe retribution for organizing and even participating in the coordinated strike action, as prison authorities retaliated with near impunity.9

When one portion of the working class faces severe retribution, for organizing and collectively withholding labor, it undermines the collective power of working people, and it allows for pitting workers on the outside against the incarcerated members of the working class. 

In an interview with WBUR in September 2016, Siddique Abdullah Hasan, an incarcerated spokesperson for the Free Ohio Movement who championed the coordinated strike, referred to the phenomenon of “insourcing,”10 i.e. shifting jobs that were or could be done by employees outside who are guaranteed a minimum wage to labor by prisoners denied the right of formal union recognition and routinely disciplined for trying to organize. The possibility of exploiting vulnerable incarcerated labor stripped of the right to organize and to collectively advocate for higher wages and better protections can entice profit-driven enterprises. The supply chains for hundreds of popular brands are already heavily reliant upon prison labor.11 When workers anywhere are prohibited from organizing and risk severe retaliation for trying to do so it normalizes near complete employer control over employees and a near total absence of workplace democracy that weakens the ability of workers everywhere to defend their rights and dignity, which is why all of organized labor ought to support the rights of all who labor to engage in protected concerted activity without intimidation or discipline. 

Kinetik Justice, a co-founder of FAM who helped organize the 2016 strike while in solitary confinement in Alabama, mentioned that he discovered through trial and error that work stoppages were the most effective tactic for prisoners to push for changes in conditions inside. Participating in a prison labor strike offers an “extreme sense of power to hopeless people,” he explained.12  But trying to lead or even just participate in the September 2016 strike left many doing extended stays in solitary or facing other severe, protracted forms of repression, underscoring why organizing ought to be protected activity inside prisons.

Circa September 2016, incarcerated persons who participated in the work stoppage were also denouncing prison slavery because of the persistence of involuntary labor. 

The 13th Amendment affirmed formal abolition but it contains an infamous exception permitting slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. In the early post-Civil War period, that Amendment, along with the “Black codes” that criminalized the everyday lives of many formerly enslaved persons, buttressed a system of “convict leasing,” wherein prisoners were leased out to industry and private enterprise to, typically, perform mandatory hard labor for free.13 

The “convict leasing” practice was ended partway through the 20th century, replaced for a time with the oft-brutal involuntary labor of chain gangs until most states disallowed them, though incarcerated workers continued to perform facility upkeep and produce goods in state-run facilities. As increasing numbers of people were packed into US prisons later in the 20th century, “the private sector lobbied to regain access to the labor of incarcerated people under the guise of vocational training,” as the authors of, The Prison Industry: How it Works and Who Profits explained. The Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program, established in 1979, enabled the private sector, with some exceptions (and loopholes), to benefit again from prison labor.14

Fast forward to the 21st century. Select states have moved to ban forced prison labor, but even a formal ban is no guarantee that incarcerated persons won’t be forced to work against their will.15 Here in California, voters lamentably rejected a measure that would have amended the state constitution, which tragically still permits forced labor for prisoners.16 If it had passed, the proposition would have made work assignments voluntary, and it would have added a degree of protection for incarcerated workers who withhold labor. 

An incarcerated firefighter with California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) told researchers that the prospect of freedom (e.g. the chance of getting reduced time) gets dangled in front of imprisoned workers “like a carrot on a stick” so as to induce compliance. “Making the choice to not work comes with consequences,” that incarcerated worker shared. “They can write you up for refusing a work assignment and take your good time away. If you keep refusing a job assignment, they use freedom as a bargaining chip. You are deemed a ‘failure to program.’”17 Those sentiments were echoed by incarcerated men who worked at a CALPIA site inside Centinela State Prison who referenced the coercion that made their labor effectively obligatory.18 Refusing to work can also imperil an incarcerated person’s parole chances or result in punishment like solitary confinement.19 With all this in mind, we suggest that any unionism interested in the common good ought to unequivocally oppose involuntary labor in all its forms, and organized labor ought to stand up for prisoner self-organization and stand against any retaliation incarcerated persons might face for organizing or refusing to work.

Second, we believe incarcerated workers should be compensated at no less than the federal minimum wage or the minimum wage established in their state—and preferably at the prevailing wage for the given sector—in addition to receiving standard overtime pay.

Incarcerated workers are excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act and thus denied minimum wage and overtime pay.20 In a handful of states, the vast majority of prison labor remains uncompensated.21

Yet, CALPIA has made more than $27 million annually.22 And although only a small section of the prison workforce is in agriculture, carceral facilities across the country managed a conservatively estimated $200 million in sales of livestock and farmed commodities over a recent six year span, according to analysis of data done by the Associated Press.23 “Nationally,” according to the ACLU, “incarcerated workers produce more than $2 billion a year in goods and commodities and over $9 billion a year in services for the maintenance of the prisons where they are warehoused.”24 

Recently, here in California, we’ve seen legislation passed that suggests it is possible to ensure incarcerated workers receive more just remuneration. Last year, the state went from paying more than 1,800 incarcerated firefighters only about $1 an hour to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour—still $9.65 less than the state minimum wage at present—though Assemblymember Isaac Bryan who authored the bill initially pushed for those workers to earn $19 an hour. The wage bump came several months after 1,100-plus incarcerated workers were on the frontlines fighting the Altadena and Pacific Palisades fires, demonstrating how essential yet devalued their labor has been.25

The costs of medical co-pays in prison and the marked up commissary items needed to supplement often inadequate nutrition from meals served and to purchase basic hygiene items make it so that spending money is more or less necessary for one to survive while incarcerated.26 Thus, many rely on loved ones outside, which puts additional financial pressure on often already struggling communities. Of the two-thirds of the prison population that work for just pennies per hour,27 many either go without basic needs or are compelled to borrow from oft-cash strapped friends and family, most of which are among the 60 percent of US residents who research suggests can’t afford a minimal quality of life.28

As Hasan noted during his 2016 interview on WBUR, friends and family on the outside will bear the burden so that loved ones in prison don’t end up in debt and risk losing their lives or getting hurt. “So if prisoners were being provided the same monetary compensation for their work as those out of society, prisoners can help their family,” he said on air.29 

Compensating incarcerated workers at a decent wage would thus begin to lessen the super-exploitation movement makers likened to prison slavery, and it would lessen the burden on working people outside of prison already suffering from the loss of loved ones from their lives when they’re locked up. 

Incarceration functions to render people inside invisible to most of the public outside. When people are out of sight and out of mind, their humanity is too often erased. Criminalization and imprisonment in our society also often come with a stigma loaded with assumptions that serve to justify carceral punishment in people’s minds while discouraging a sense of solidarity with those behind bars. But if the labor movement truly values solidarity and the racial and socioeconomic justice that genuine solidarity demands, those involved in and seeking to rebuild it can no longer exclude the incarcerated working class. To commemorate the courage and sacrifice of the many who participated in the coordinated strike against prison slavery 10 years ago, we want to affirm the place of imprisoned persons alongside us within the movement and support their struggle for rights and dignity as fellow workers.

Citations

  1. “Announcement of Nationally Coordinated Prisoner Workstoppage for Sept 9, 2016,” SupportPrisonResistance.net, April 1, 2016, accessed August 28, 2016, https://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org/post/2016/04/01/announcement-of-nationally-coordinated-prisoner-workstoppage-for-sept-9-2016.
  2. George Pro, Ricky Camplain, and Charles H. Lea III, “The competing effects of racial discrimination and racial identity on the predicted number of days incarcerated in the US: A national profile of Black, Latino/Latina, and American Indian/Alaska Native populations,” PLoS ONE 17, no. 6: e0268987 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268987; Marijana Kotlaja, Sarah Jensen, Pavithra Nagarajan and J. Ra’Chel Fowler, “Understanding the Impact of Racial and Ethnic Disparities from Arrest to Sentencing,” Justice System Partners, April 2026, accessed August 28, 2026, https://safetyandjusticechallenge.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/UnderstandingRacialAndEthnicDisparitiesFromArrestToSentencing-FullReport.pdf; Nazgol Ghandnoosh, “One in Five: Racial Disparity in Imprisonment — Causes and Remedies,” The Sentencing Project, December 7, 2023, accessed August 28, 2026, https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/one-in-five-racial-disparity-in-imprisonment-causes-and-remedies; Desiree L. Fox, Ciara D. Hansen, and Ann M. Miller, “OVER-INCARCERATION OF NATIVE AMERICANS: ROOTS, INEQUITIES, AND SOLUTIONS,” Safety and Justice Challenge, 2022, accessed August 28, 2026, https://safetyandjusticechallenge.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/OverIncarcerationOfNativeAmericans.pdf; Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010[2012]); Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice (Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1979[2001]); Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004[2009]); Shawn Fremstad, “The Increasing Significance of Class in American Hyperincarceration,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, March 20, 2025, https://cepr.net/publications/increasing-significance-of-class-in-american-hyperincarceration.
  3. Andrej Grubačić and Denis O’Hearn, Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 239.
  4. Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (New York: Pantheon Books, 2016); Orisanmi Burton, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2023).
  5. Quoted in Dan Baum, “Legalize it All,” Harper’s Magazine, April 2016, https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all.
  6. James Kilgore, Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time (New York: The New Press, 2015), 11; Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 7. See also: James Anderson, A Few Theses on Art, Alienation, and Abolition.” Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 5, no. 3 (2021), http://dx.doi.org/10.14394/eidos.jpc.2021.0030, 93-94.
  7. “Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers,” ACLU / The University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, 2022, 12, 61.
  8. Ibid, 12; Spencer Woodman, “California Blames Incarcerated Workers for Unsafe Conditions and Amputations,” The Intercept, December 28, 2016, https://theintercept.com/2016/12/28/california-blames-incarcerated-workers-for-unsafe-conditions-and-amputations.
  9. Alice Speri, “A Prison Strike Organizer Suffers Retaliation for Speaking With Journalists,” The Intercept, October 6, 2016, https://theintercept.com/2016/10/06/a-prison-strike-organizer-suffers-retaliation-for-speaking-with-journalists; Brian Nam-Sonenstein, “Prison Strike Leader Beaten By Officers Fears For Life After Retaliation,” Shadowproof, December 16, 2016, https://shadowproof.com/2016/12/16/prison-strike-leader-fears-for-his-life-beaten-guards; Brian Nam-Sonenstein, “Fiancé Of Michigan Prisoner Describes Brutal Response To Prison Strike,” Shadowproof, October 14, 2016, https://shadowproof.com/2016/10/14/fiance-of-kinross-prisoner-who-participated-in-national-strike-describes-retaliation.
  10.  “American Prison Inmates, On Strike,” WBUR, September 28, 2016, ~14:53 – ~24:33, https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2016/09/28/prison-strike-prison-reform.
  11. Robin McDowell and Margie Mason, “Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands,” Associated Press, January 29, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e.
  12. Kinetik Justice, “The Evolution of a Solution,” NLG Review 79, no. 1 (Summer 2023), 47, 48.
  13. Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 20-37. Mary Rose Whitehouse, “Modern Prison Labor: A Reemergence of Convict Leasing under the Guise of Rehabilitation and Private Enterprises,” Loyola Journal of Public Interest Law 18, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 89–113.
  14. Bianca Tylek and Worth Rises, The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits (The New Press, 2025), 42-43.
  15. Meg Anderson, “Colorado banned forced prison labor 5 years ago. Prisoners say it’s still happening,” NPR, November 13, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/11/13/1210564359/slavery-prison-forced-labor-movement.
  16. “Anti-slavery measure Prop. 6 fails, allowing forced labor to continue in California prisons,” CalMatters, November 10, 2024, accessed August 28, 2026, https://calmatters.org/politics/elections/2024/11/california-election-result-proposition-6-fails
  17. Quoted in “Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers,” ACLU / The University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, 50.
  18. James Anderson, “Incarcerated workers in California organize against unjust policies and degrading conditions,” Prism, April 29, 2025, https://prism.ghost.io/incarcerated-workers-california-work-slowdown.
  19. Robin McDowell and Margie Mason, “Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands,” Associated Press, January 29, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e.
  20. “Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers,” ACLU / The University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, 12.
  21. Andrew Ross, Tommaso Bardelli, and Aiyuba Thomas, Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery (New York: OR Books, 2024), 11.
  22. Ibid, 33.
  23. McDowell and Mason, “Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands”.
  24. “Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers,” ACLU / The University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, 22.
  25. Cayla Mihalovich, “In a first, California moves toward paying incarcerated firefighters minimum wage,” CalMatters, July 2, 2025, https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/07/incarcerated-firefighter-minimum-wage; Laura Nelson, “California’s incarcerated firefighters, who earn about $1 per hour, may soon get a hefty raise,” Los Angeles Times, September 12, 2025, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-09-12/californias-incarcerated-firefighters-who-make-1-per-hour-may-soon-get-a-raise.
  26. Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg and Ethan Corey, “Locked In, Priced Out: How Prison Commissary Price-Gouging Preys on the Incarcerated,” The Appeal, April 17, 2024, https://theappeal.org/locked-in-priced-out-how-much-prison-commissary-prices; Anna Anderson, “Medical Debt Behind Bars: The Punishing Impact of Copays, Fees and Other Carceral Medical Debt,” National Consumer Law Center, September 2024, https://www.nclc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/202409_Report_Medical-Debt-Behind-Bars.pdf.
  27. Tylek and Worth Rises, The Prison Industry, 44-45.
  28. Megan Cerullo, “Most Americans don’t earn enough to afford basic costs of living, analysis finds,” CBS News, May 16, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-living-income-quality-of-life.
  29. “American Prison Inmates, On Strike,” WBUR.