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Did you know that prisons across Colorado currently force imprisoned people to work as slaves? (How is this legal? https://www.ucwcolorado.org/stories/faq )
Coloradoâs slave labor program is overseen by a government agency called Colorado Corrections Industries (CCI). They use prisoners to produce cheap furniture.
CCI was the University of Coloradoâs (CU) exclusive furniture provider from the 1970s until 2020 - that means that any furniture purchased had to be made by slave laborers working for CCI.
According to research by Prison Policy Project, the typical wages for prison laborers in Colorado range from $0.34-$0.82 per day. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/
In 2020, CU moved to no longer use CCI as an exclusive provider of furniture - but it is still an allowed provider. As a result, other firms are now able to bid for contracts in competition with CCI, but CCI underbids competitors because their workers are âpaidâ pennies a day.
CU has a price agreement with CCI effective until June 30, 2021 ( https://www.cu.edu/psc/how-buy-furniture). We must stop a renewal of the price agreement.
Slavery is wrong in all its forms. UCW calls on CU to terminate its contracts with CCI until it pays its workers at least minimum wage and affords its workers all the labor rights non-caged people enjoy. Click the link below to join us in this fight https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfcI0AEAh8vJtYjcLuGRBR_M0Ewe_NajOc73gRZhPGnTf4V9A/viewform?link_id=5&can_id=e911990221e3a3c54b09eedfb0bf726f&source=email-cu-still-uses-slave-labor&email_referrer=email_1099165&email_subject=cu-still-uses-slave-labor
