Prison guards and their union....

Some unions are BAD and are helping the prison industrial complex grow. PRISON GUARD UNIONS have got to GO!

CCPOA: The Union Behind Prison Growth
Judith Tannenbaum

http://www.prisonwall.org/ccpoa.htm
As a little girl, I watched my grandmother tap the union label on a loaf of rye bread; ``Buy only if it has this,'' she instructed.

``Wear it in good health,'' she'd say when I modeled a new shirt or skirt. First, though, she made sure she found the International Ladies Garment Workers Union label affixed to the fabric. I still get misty-eyed when I hear Pete Seeger sing ``Which Side Are You On?'' But, despite my respect for the history of union protection and support of working people, these days I'm not always on the side I thought I was on.

As a former poetry teacher at San Quentin State Prison and a current visitor to prisoner-students, I know some of what's happening in our state prisons and, because of what I know, I can't be on the side of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.

The power this prison guards' union wields inside our prisons, legislative chambers and governor's office disturbs me. It should disturb every citizen.

Under the leadership of Don Novey, the CCPOA deducts money from each member's paycheck to fund a political action committee that has enabled the union to be among the top political donors in every election cycle since 1990. A $425,000 check from the CCPOA to Pete Wilson's re-election committee in 1994 was, reportedly, the largest single donation ever made to a California candidate.

A guard's salary is now approximately $40,000 a year: This for a job that requires only that one be at least 21 and a high school graduate (or have, as the convicts say, ``a GED and no felonies''). OK, fine: Unions are supposed to get the best deal possible for the onwarkers they represent. Congratulations, Don Novey.

The problem is that CCPOA members aren't baking rye bread or sewing clothes. Instead, their job gives them tremendous power over human beings. The union's Political Action Committee fund depends on members' dues, the sum of which depends on the total number of correctional officers contributing which, in turn, depends on the number of incarcerated men and women. Pay raises and perks are one thing. But it's something else again when the CCPOA lobbies to influence state laws and policy in ways that result in locking up more people. In the past 15 years, there's been a 400 percent increase in the number of people incarcerated. All the while, the state Department of Corrections has resisted any attempt to open to public scrutiny what happens behind prison walls.

Despite a 1996 Department of Corrections media ban, which severely limits the way reporters gather information from prisoners, the press has managed to report abuses at Corcoran, Pelican Bay and Pleasant Valley state prisons, as well as the union's successful efforts to limit investigations into these abuses. Gov. Gray Davis just vetoed a bill, AB1440, that would have returned full media access.

Legislation (SB451) introduced by State Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, would have removed prison brutality cases from the purview of local prosecutors and placed them in the hands of the attorney general. SB451 passed in the Senate but then came under intense lobbying from a single foe -- the CCPOA -- and died in the Assembly's Public Safety Committee.

Similarly, the Legislature approved a bill introduced by Democratic Assemblyman Roderick Wright to establish a $1 million pilot program of alternative punishment for some nonviolent parole offenders. Since it costs $21,000 a year to incarcerate a felon, the program could have saved $600 million of the taxpayer money spent each year to imprison parole violators. Once again, the only opposition came from the CCPOA. Gov. Davis, who received at least $2 million in political contributions from the union and who will receive the proceeds from a $3,000-a-head fund-raising golf tournament hosted by the CCPOA last month, invoked his first veto and killed the bill.

Certainly the connection between money and politics comes as no surprise. But the consequence of this particular connection gives guards a dangerous power.

A prison administrator told me, ``You wouldn't believe how many officers run around here feeling immune because they know Davis and the legislators are in the union's pocket.''

Oh, I'd believe it.
http://www.prisonwall.org/ccpoa.htm

Of this union I'm tired of good wages, excellent health care, annuity and pension benifits the Co. can't touch. I'd much rather depend on working at WalMart till I die>:sarcasm:

...the real problem with our prison system is the unions.


:crazy:

but the capacity of the for-profit prison industry to manipulate the union to its own betterment.

Frankly speaking, for the responsibility and power wielded by prison workers, $40,000 is hardly adequate. It's another side of the equation, where the guards have more in common with their charges than they do with the prison management - some are consumate professionals, while others are the guys that smuggle dope in to the prisoners. In such an environment it is easy to create an 'us or them' mentality that puts the union in the hands of the management.
ON EDIT: Particularly, since prisons tend to be built in parts of the country where unions are weak, and all that most people know about unions is that they get workers pay raises, period, and that's all they expect of them.

Having been a Correctional Officer in Wisconsin's prison system I would say that our union does an excellent job of not only garnering decent wages but also in working with our legislature to provide a safe working environment. Safe for COs and for inmates. Non union private prisons are hell holes that should not even exist. Some core functions of government should NEVER be privatized or for profit. The criminal justice system being foremost in this category!

And it's hard to get anything done politically when people are lobbying to keep their jobs.