Events for ETI Members

RAISING THE STAKES
ETI AGM November 2002

Roundtable Workshop 1
Prison Labour

Chair:	Pins Brown, ETI Secretariat
Speakers:	David Ould, Deputy Director, Anti-Slavery International Simon Steyne, International Officer, TUC and ILO Committee of Experts
Case Study:	Lyndsay Cunliffe, Littlewoods

Who participated?

10 participants and amongst members there were 6 companies, 1 Trade Union and 1 NGO represented. Members of ETI Secretariat were also in attendance.

Key points from presentations

Presentation by Simon Steyne, TUC

This presentation gave an overview of:

• The context and key principles of the ILO Convention 29 on forced labour
• Recommendations of the ILO Committee of Experts: the conditions that should be met if prisoners work for private companies
• Working conditions found in UK prisons, and implications for compliance with ILO jurisprudence
• Key issues

Presentation by David Ould, Anti-Slavery International

This presentation provided an overview of:

• The different types of international law governing forced labour (including ILO conventions, and UN, WTO and European rules)
• The nature of forced prison labour in "hotspots" (China, Burma, North Korea)
• Prisoners' wages in different countries
• Points to consider when deciding whether prison work is exploitative

Presentation by Lyndsay Cunliffe, Littlewoods

The Littlewoods presentation covered:

• case studies of prison work in the UK, Italy and Germany
• common issues between the case studies
• benefits and concerns about prison work
• next steps for Littlewoods

for full presentation notes please contact: adil@eti.org.uk

Key issues arising

It was notable that, despite the complexity of the issue, there was broad agreement between the three presenters in terms of the key issues associated with prison labour and the strategic implications. Key issues arising from the three presentations were as follows:

• According to ILO standards, convicted prisoners in state prisons may be required to work for the state. Key concerns about prison labour centre around situations where prisoners are working for private companies. In a privately-owned prison, this includes any work done for the prison itself.
   
• If a prisoner is working for a private company, the work undertaken should meet certain conditions which approximate to conditions of free employment, and which involve a three-way contract between the prisoner, the prison and the private employer.
   
• Prison workers generally get paid less than other workers. A key issue to consider, therefore, is whether work carried out by prisoners has real benefits in terms of their rehabilitation, or whether the prisoners are simply being exploited as cheap labour with little benefit to the prisoners. In the UK most work done by prisoners is unskilled - how good is that for rehabilitation? However, prisoners will often choose to do unskilled work compared to being locked up for 23 hours a day, and will prefer to have the extra income even if it is considerably less than the minimum wage. Moreover, many prisoners may have never had a "proper job" - doing work while in prison can be valuable in that they can obtain a reference from the employer, and this makes it much easier for them to get a job when leaving prison.
   
• It is clear that, at present, neither national law nor current practice in the UK conforms with ILO standards on prison labour.
   
• World-wide, prison labour (i.e. work carried out by prisoners for private companies) is on the increase. However, organisations working in support of prisoners do not have a handle on the problems involved with "normal" prison labour - they have tended to focus on issues associated with political prisoners and forced prison labour (i.e. where people have been put in prison without "due legal process").
   
• From a company's perspective, one should be prepared for the fact that suppliers are not likely to provide information voluntarily about the use of prison labour. Need to find more subtle ways of finding this out.

Summing up/recommendations

Participants at the workshop recommended that ETI should:

• organise a roundtable to raise issues covered in this workshop more widely amongst the membership, and to explore in more depth how the ETI Base Code can be applied in the context of prison labour. The perspective of prisoners should be included in the roundtable.
   
• Consider piloting the implementation of ILO standards in a state prison in the UK, to test whether and how they can be applied.

 

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See also:

• ETI Annual Report 2001/2002 - "Raising the Stakes"
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• Events