In promoting Windows 95, Microsoft mounted one of the most expensive advertising campaigns in US history. Microsoft failed to mention that some of the company's new software is packed by prison labour. This news comes from Paul Wright and Dan Pens, two inmates from Washington state who edit Prison Legal News.
According to people incarcerated at the Twin Rivers Correctional Center in Monroe, Washington, Microsoft hired a packaging company, Exmark, to ship Windows 95. Exmark used prisoners for part of the job and also had inmates package tens of thousands of units of Microsoft Office, another software product, as well as hundreds of thousands of Microsoft mouses.
Washington is a pioneer in the use of prison labour, a boom industry in the US. In 1993, the state legislature passed a bill to increase the number of prison labourers by 300 per year until the year 2000. The next year the state built a 56,000-square feet [5200 square metres] factory near the Monroe prison.
Companies employing prisoners pay US$4.90 an hour, the minimum wage in Washington, of which only $1-2 ends up in the prisoners' pockets. The rest is deducted for the "cost of corrections", a victims' compensation fund and to pay state and federal taxes.
[Abridged from CounterPunch, edited by Ken Silverstein and Alexander Cockburn. 22 issues a year: US$40 individuals, $100 institutions, $25 student/low-income. PO Box 18675, Washington, DC 20036, USA.]