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Show Laundry employees pleased with decision a. "Everybody here is very pleased about the decision (to cancel the proposal to have prison inmates run the laundry). We are glad that the governor stepped in,". Jack Wise, spokesperson for laundry personnel at the Utah State Training School, says. Wise said it was an "kind of an uphill up-hill fight but the people here believed in their jobs and the people in American Fork believed in their community. The two together were an unstoppable force. "There's a lot of good people out there in the community and once the issue came out they could see there were two many holes in the proposal," Wise said. The American Fork Chamber of Commerce learned Governor Norman Bangerter had stepped in when Representive Chris Fox spoke at their monthly meeting on March 16. Ms. Fox had just come from a meeting between herself, Rep. Donald LeBaron, Mayor Kent Evans, Orville Gunther and others at which the decision had been made. She said the proposal had started "very innocently" when during the " See REACTION on page 3 Reaction Continued from front page first week in January, when a proposal had been made to Winn Tathum, Utah Correctional Industries In-dustries director, to see what cost saving measures could be made through the use of inmate labor. It was determined it would save the state about $200,000 by using inmates to run the prison laundry. "We were told, don't worry. everybody will be transferred and no one will lose their job," Ms. Fox said. As it came out that this probably wasn't the case, "everybody started getting a little more nervous," Ms. Fox said. Other problems such as the security issue also were brought up, she said. |