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Show State would have to pay inmates minimum wage By MARC HADDOCK Utah State may have had to pay prisoners working at the Utah State Training School laundry substantially sub-stantially more than was first anticipated, an-ticipated, according to a letter from the Department of Labor office in Denver, Colo. Although the letter was received after Gov. Norm Bangerter killed a proposal to turn operation, American Fork resident Orville Gunther, who requested the information in-formation in the letter, said the letter should "prevent any revival of the program for the future." Gunther said he wrote to the Employment Standards Administration Ad-ministration to ask how prisoners could work at the laundry facilities for less than minimum wage. A proposal from Utah Correctional Correc-tional Industries (UCI) to use inmate in-mate labor to operate the laundry facilities at the training school included in-cluded an estimate of $1.25 an hour for the inmate labor. The low hourly rate was a major factor in permitting UCI to operate the laundry for $175,000 less a year than the facility now costs. Gunther wrote to the Labor Department's Denver Office to see how the Fair Labor Standards Act might apply to the laundry proposal. The letter, written by Loren E. Gilbert, assistant regional administrator ad-ministrator for Wage-Hour, says federal law allows inmates to work for less than minimum wage "within the confines of the institution, on prison farms, roadgangs, or other areas directly associated with the incarceration program" because such persons are not defined by the act as employees. But, based on the information sent by Gunther, Gilbert said that the laundry proposal did not meet those criteria. "Therefore, minimum wage would be applicable," the letter says. "This, of course, would wipe out the claimed savings and of itself have killed the proposal," Gunther said. The letter was dated March 14 -two days before Bangerter decided to halt the proposal. But it was not received until Monday, March 21. |
