OLYMPIA — State Rep. Tarra Simmons, D-Bremerton, wants the state to pay incarcerated workers more money.
She’s sponsoring House Bill 1024, called the “Real Labor, Real Wages Act,” to raise incarcerated workers’ wages to the state minimum of $15.74. Simmons, believed to be the first formerly incarcerated person elected to the State Legislature, said when she was in prison she worked graveyard shifts for no more than 42 cents an hour, after various deductions to her paycheck.
“A lot of lawmakers aren’t prioritizing the issues of the incarcerated population because they haven’t lived that experience,” Simmons said.
Nationwide, Colorado is the only state that pays state minimum wage for incarcerated labor. In Illinois, lawmakers raised pay to $2.50 a day. Similar legislation was introduced this year in New York and has previously failed in Arizona, California, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas and Virginia. Almost all incarcerated labor in several southern states is unpaid, according to Pew Research.
At least 80% of U.S. prison work is dedicated to maintaining their facilities like laundry or working in the kitchen, according to a report by the ACLU and the University of Chicago Law school. Incarcerated workers make more than $2 billion a year in goods and over $9 billion annually in prison maintenance services, the authors wrote.
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