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Inmate Cooks Stage Strike: Sterling Facility Locked Down After Protest Over Wages

from Denver Post, July 2, 2003
by Kirk Mitchell

About 1,100 medium- and maximum-security prisoners at the Sterling Correctional Facility were put in lockdown Tuesday after dozens of inmate cooks refused to work in protest of lower prisoner wages.

A special operations response team similar to a SWAT unit was placed on standby in case violence breaks out or prison property is destroyed.

It is the first such work stoppage by inmates at a Colorado prison since 1978, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan said.

"We are prepared for the worst-case scenario, and at this time it's quiet," Morgan said Tuesday.

Inmates sent guards anonymous letters explaining why they wouldn't work Tuesday, the first day of the state's fiscal year and of the lower pay rates, she said.

The work stoppage is in protest of pay being dropped to 60 cents a day for inmate workers who do everything from custodial work to laundry to cooking, Morgan said. In the past, pay ranged from 40 cents a day to $2.

Inmates who do not work saw their pay drop from 28 cents to 23 cents a day. The money, which is considered a per-diem stipend and not a wage, pays for hygiene items such as shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, toilet paper and soap.

Twenty percent of inmate pay automatically is deducted to pay child support, victim compensation fees and court fines, said Carla Gerle, who has a son in the Arrowhead Correctional Center in Canon City.

"(Prisoners) feel this sort of protest is the only way to be heard," Gerle said.

She said pay was already extremely low before the cuts. She worries that many inmates will stop working for the lower pay and that the state will have to hire people such as cooks and laundry workers.

"If the state has to do that, it will cost thousands and thousands of dollars, even at minimum wage," Gerle said.

The Colorado legislature lowered the pay as part of cost-cutting measures linked to a state revenue shortfall estimated at $1 billion.

Other budget cuts within the Department of Corrections included employee layoffs. The last workday for 32 corrections employees was Monday, and an additional 35 also may be laid off, Morgan said.

At 3 a.m. when the first shift of 15 cooks at Sterling was called to start preparing breakfast, all refused to work, Morgan said.

When two more shifts of cooks also refused to work, the west side of the Sterling facility was placed in lockdown, Morgan said.

During lockdowns, prisoners receive cold meals in their cells, phones are turned off and visitation rights are stopped. Prisoners are denied recreation privileges and do not get to shower, Morgan said.

Instead of a hot breakfast of oatmeal and breakfast burritos, inmates were given two boiled eggs, jelly, fruit, four slices of bread and orange juice, Morgan said.

Teachers and non-security staff were called in early Tuesday to prepare the meals, she said.

Department inspectors are investigating who organized the work stoppage.

Inciting a prison disturbance can result in segregation, loss of earned time and transfer to a higher-security prison, according to Morgan.

The east half of the Sterling prison was not in lockdown, although about half of the food service workers there refused to work at noon and were placed in segregation, Morgan said. There were no work stoppages at any of the system's 21 other prisons, which were all affected by the pay cuts, Morgan said.

The last work stoppage was 25 years ago at the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility in Canon City. Prisoners there were protesting crowding. The prison had 2,000 inmates at the time; today it holds 740.

Prisoners can earn anywhere from 56 cents a day in Louisiana to $10.40 a day in Kentucky, according to a 1998 survey of prisons by the American Civil Liberties Union. New Mexico and Nebraska paid $6.40 and $7.20 a day respectively.