Explosive Lawsuit Challenges Discriminatory, Unconstitutional Forced Labor Scheme in Alabama State Prisons
‘A modern-day form of slavery’
Union of Southern Service Workers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 12, 2023
Contact: Matt Lopez, Matt.Lopez@berlinrosen.com, (805) 377-2950
Suit filed by current, former incarcerated Alabamians, major labor unions, civil rights org lays out $450 million in annual benefit for Alabama
Suit details system denying Black Alabamians parole at 2 to 1 rate compared to White candidates to maintain pool of workers
Suit alleges McDonald’s, KFC, Wendy’s stores employ incarcerated labor
Incarcerated Alabamians demand state end forced labor scheme, release individuals qualified for parole, require repayment of profits made from Alabamians’ forced labor
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A federal class action lawsuit filed Tuesday challenges a “modern-day form of slavery” in the Alabama prison system that traps Black Alabamians in a forced labor scheme and generates $450 million in annual benefit for the state. The suit seeks to dismantle the forced labor scheme and compensate current and former incarcerated individual Alabamians for the profits their work has powered.
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in the middle district of Alabama, by 10 current and former incarcerated Alabamians, Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Mid-South Council and The Woods Foundation, compares the current forced labor scheme to the extremely profitable system of convict leasing that powered Alabama’s economy in the decades following the Civil War. By 1898, Alabama’s convict leasing system accounted for around 70 percent of the state budget.
More than a century later, the lawsuit alleges, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) has resurrected the 19th century convict leasing system in violation of the U.S. Constitution, the Alabama Constitution, and a litany of federal laws meant to prevent human trafficking and discrimination. In November 2022, Alabama voters to amend the state constitution to outlaw all forms of involuntary servitude — yet the state prison’s profitable forced labor scheme continues.
“The more people ADOC keeps incarcerated and working, the more money ADOC . . . [can] reap through their forced labor and wrongful detention scheme, and the greater their economic incentive to keep perpetuating that unlawful scheme,” the suit charges.
The defendants named in the suit include the architects of the forced labor scheme — including Governor Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall — and numerous public and private entities that benefit from it, including the City of Montgomery, the City of Troy, Jefferson County, Bama Budweiser, and McDonald’s, KFC and Wendy’s stores across the state.
The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, is standing in solidarity with the incarcerated workers and plaintiffs in the lawsuit and committing to fighting back against forced labor wherever it occurs.
Forced Labor is ‘Fuel That Fires’ $450M Annually
Alabama’s work-release program regularly “leases” the labor of incarcerated people to private businesses — including at McDonald’s, KFC and Wendy’s restaurants and a Budweiser distributor — as well as state, county and city agencies. Often, the state requires incarcerated people to work at ADOC itself, either producing goods for sale or performing unpaid labor to run the prison system’s own facilities in response to severe staff shortages.
“Labor coerced from Alabama’s disproportionately Black incarcerated population is the fuel that fires ADOC’s extremely lucrative profit-making engine,” the suit reads. At Governor Ivey’s direction, the suit continues, “ADOC enforces express rules that severely punish incarcerated people both for refusing to work and for encouraging work stoppages.”
Further, the suit alleges, Alabama has created and maintained conditions of such extraordinary violence throughout the state prison system that for many incarcerated individuals, taking any position that physically removes them from the facilities is the only way to escape the threat of physical harm. ADOC also deprives incarcerated individuals of essential goods like warm winter clothes and usable shoes and charges exorbitant prices to purchase those same goods, deepening incarcerated individuals’ need to work.
But while private employers nominally agree to pay incarcerated workers a prevailing wage, Alabama collects a series of onerous fees that drive pay down to as low as $2.06/hr. Specifically, ADOC levies a 40 percent pre-tax deduction on every paycheck and often charges workers additional fees for transportation and laundering work uniforms.
Discriminatory Parole System Keeps Black Alabamians as Available Labor
The suit also alleges that the state of Alabama has maintained a discriminatory parole system that disproportionately keeps Black Alabamians incarcerated and available to participate in the forced labor scheme. In Alabama, more than half of the incarcerated population is Black, compared to approximately a quarter of the overall state population being Black.
In 2015, Alabama enacted a law to reduce overcrowding in the state’s prisons, including by instituting a new, evidence-based parole process that more than doubled the number of incarcerated people released on parole. The new system also resulted in nearly equal parole outcomes for Black and White incarcerated individuals’ parole grants.
By 2018, however, the work-release population had declined by nearly 40 percent. That same year, Governor Ivey began a years-long assault on the parole system, demanding that the Parole Board disregard the evidence-based objective standards for parole decisions and making changes to drastically reduce the rate of parole grants.
As a result, between 2020 and 2022, Alabama state prisons denied parole to Black incarcerated individuals at a two to one rate compared with their white counterparts. After being denied parole, Black incarcerated individuals have also had to wait longer before being reconsidered, often receiving the maximum of 5 year “reset” period.
“Ivey, Marshall, and the Parole Board members have long been aware that increasing the rate of parole denials, particularly for Black incarcerated people with a demonstrated history of safely participating in off-site work programs, would ensure that these low-risk incarcerated workers would remain available to provide labor” for the State’s forced labor scheme, the suit alleges.
Private employers, including locations of some of the biggest drink and fast-food brands in the world, benefit from Alabama’s incarcerated labor scheme. While incarcerated Alabamians are compelled to participate in the forced labor scheme, private employers are not. The suit notes that conditions in Alabama state prisons and Governor Ivey’s discriminatory changes to the parole system have been widely publicized, and that employers should reasonably understand that by accepting forced labor they are participating in that system.
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