Prisons and Computer Recycling

TOXIC SWEATSHOPS

HOW UNICOR PRISON RECYCLING HARMS WORKERS, COMMUNITIES, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE RECYCLING INDUSTRY

In the past few years, the storm of complaints about UNICOR’s recycling program from prisoners, prison guards, and others has brought these hidden sweatshops into public view. Since 1994, UNICOR has built a lucrative business that employs prisoners to recycle electronic waste (e-waste). A massive array of ewaste is largely hidden from view, as are the workers who handle the waste. Over 100,000 computers become obsolete in the U.S. every day.1 And that’s only the computers. E-waste includes computers, personal digital assistants, TVs, and other electronic devices. E-waste is a doubleedged sword: it is rich in precious materials that can be recycled, but it also contains a cocktail of hazardous chemicals such as lead, mercury, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and cadmium.

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This report examines the e-waste recycling programs run by Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a government-owned corporation that does business under the trade name UNICOR. Founded in 1934 as a work program to keep prisoners occupied, FPI has become a large government contractor, generating over $765 million in sales in 2005. UNICOR’s connections gave it access to lucrative government contracts and easily made it a force in the e-waste recycling industry. As journalist Elizabeth Grossman states, “With revenue of ten million dollars in 2004, seven locations... and roughly one thousand inmate employees who in 2004 processed nearly 44 million pounds of electronic equipment, UNICOR is one of the country’s largest electronics recyclers, and its prices are tough to beat.”2 Unfortunately, UNICOR’s low prices come at the expense of its captive labor force. Some types of discarded electronics are considered hazardous waste by the EPA and other regulatory agencies, researchers, industries, and advocates across the globe. As states become aware that these hazards may leach into and contaminate soil and groundwater, more are banning televisions, monitors, and sometimes other electronics from landfills. Quoted in sidebars throughout this report, you will hear directly from prisoners, the front-line workers recycling ewaste for UNICOR. The conditions prisoners describe are dire. UNICOR’s captive laborers work in conditions similar to those in sweatshops across the world. Prisoners have few of the labor rights and protections other U.S. workers enjoy.

Prisoners are excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act and insufficiently protected by regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which cannot conduct surprise inspections. The quotations presented in this report are drawn from letters and affidavits received by Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Identifying characteristics have been stripped due to reports of firings and retaliation against prisoners. While this report is grounded in prisoners’ experiences, you also will meet responsible recyclers, contractors, and prison staff who recognize the problems of exploitation in e-waste. Government hearings and investigations confirm that serious problems exist.

As U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch stated: Federal employees and prisoners inhaling poisons due to the neglect of their superiors, and federal agencies whitewashing the investigation. It sounds like a Hollywood dramatization like Shawshank Redemption, or a John Grisham novel with wild conspiracy theories. In this case, however, workers and inmates were exposed to hazardous materials without protection... and the Bureau of Prisons and Federal Prison Industries did nothing to stop it, and indeed frustrated attempts to investigate the matter... Now some people might say, prisoners getting poisoned? What’s the big deal? Who cares? We do.3

This report’s principal findings are outlined below.

“What I and others think is the funniest thing about this recycling plant is that the STATE made it illegal to dispose of computers and computer peripherals in their waste and garbage dumps, because it is hazardous to the health of STATE citizens. Guess who our biggest provider of old and recycleable computers and monitors is?? Yup, you guessed it: the good ol' STATE!!! They are too dangerous for their law-abiding citizens, who need to be protected, but they aren't too hazardous to federal prison inmates incarcerated in STATE, who are not given all the information, the correct or adequate tools...and who are not being given adequate safety gear to protect them from the hazardous wastes that the citizens are being protected from. Ironic, isn't it??!!”
— Prisoner A

KEY FINDINGS

UNICOR has failed to adequately protect prisoners and staff from exposure to toxics.

When dismantling electronics, prisoners handling toxic components need ventilation, proper tools, and adequate protective gear, as do prison staff working in the area. UNICOR facilities repeatedly failed to provide proper recycling procedures to captive laborers and staff supervisors. UNICOR’s policy of measured modernization— limiting automation in order to maximize the number of prisoners who work—increases the risk of workplace injuries to prisoners and guards. The adverse health effects of long-term exposure to the toxic materials in e-waste are costs that families and/or public health services will bear— not UNICOR.

UNICOR has failed to protect communities from hazardous materials.

Poor workplace safety practices affect communities as well. Leroy Smith, a prison health and safety manager, has expressed concerns about prison guards who go home to their families with dust on their clothes. Smith’s attorney Mary Dryovage and Jeff Ruch, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, have noted that Smith’s claims “were not fully investigated,” including charges that UNICOR disposed of “hazardous metals” and “contaminated mopheads...at county landfills” and that “mop water would be disposed down sewage drains, which would be released into the city waste water treatment plant.”4

Concern about the community health and safety effects of prisons is in keeping with the findings of the recently concluded national, bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, which open, “What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons. It comes home with prisoners when they are released and with corrections officers at the end of each day’s shift .... It influences the safety, health, and prosperity of us all.”5

UNICOR undercuts responsible recycling businesses.

Not all electronics recyclers are the same. Much of what passes as “electronics recycling” is exporting harm — dumping ewaste on poor communities in China, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and other countries.6 However, a growing segment of the U.S. electronics recycling industry is taking concrete steps to educate and to protect workers, communities, and the environment. These recyclers are being undermined by UNICOR’s government sweatshop model. UNICOR’s low wages, limited worker protections, and use of outdated equipment allow UNICOR to underbid conscientious commercial recycling operations.

In the past few years, a barrage of complaints about UNICOR’s recycling program from prisoners and prison guards has forced the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to investigate workplace conditions. BOP admitted in a 2005 report that prisoners and staff in at least three UNICOR Recycling factories—Elkton, Ohio; Texarkana, Texas; and Atwater, California—were exposed to toxics.7

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel later declared BOP’s inquiry “cursory at best”8 and recommended an independent investigation. In September 2006, Special Counsel Scott Bloch named BOP employee Leroy Smith Public Servant of the Year for blowing the whistle on UNICOR’s failure to protect workers. Smith served as a health and safety manager at the Atwater federal prison. In his prepared comments for the award ceremony, Smith contended that conditions at UNICOR Recycling have not been remedied:

I receive calls from my colleagues working in computer recycling operations at other correctional institutions who describe coming home coated in dust. They had been assured that there was no danger. Now, many have health problems and others are scared about what lies in store for them.... [B]oth staff and inmates do not know what they have been exposed to or in what quantities. I am at a loss as to what to tell them. I do not know what resources are available to them or who will be able to answer their questions.9 Despite media coverage of problems with UNICOR Recycling, prisoners and
impacted communities continue to face major barriers in pursuing their rights to be free of exposure to toxics. In recent years, some of UNICOR’s larger clients, including Dell Inc. and the state of California, have pulled their contracts due to public pressure. Additionally, recyclers have successfully challenged UNICOR’s effort to compete for EPA recycling contracts set aside for small businesses.

By publishing this report, the Center for Environmental Health, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Prison Activist Resource Center, and the Computer TakeBack Campaign aim to uncover and stop the environmental health abuse and exploitation of workers in prisons; expose UNICOR as an unacceptable choice for electronics recycling; and educate institutions, corporations, and individuals seeking responsible electronics recycling options that promote high labor, environmental, and human rights standards.10

“When the operation began, most glass room workers would heft the CRT [cathode ray tube] to head height and slam the CRT down on the metal table and keep slamming it on the table until the glass broke away from whatever they were trying to remove.” —Prisoner D

“We are required to scrape the labels off the CRTs but we aren't given scrapers to do it with. We are told to use or make sharp knife-like objects [out of monitor parts] and to use them to scrape the labels off the CRTs. Many inmates lacerate themselves while following these orders.” —Prisoner B

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