AFSCME Fights Alaskan Effort to Privatize New Prison

Alaskan AFSCME members are fighting legislative efforts to build a new 1,000-bed prison that would be operated by a private company.

The plan would concentrate many Alaska inmates in a new prison in Anchorage, without relieving the overcrowding in remote parts of the state-areas of sparse population and isolated communities.

The Alaska State Employees Association (ASEA)/AFSCME Local 52, has repeatedly made the arguments that the proposal will not save taxpayers any money, it won't relieve overcrowding and the bill does not require a feasibility or cost-benefit study.

Critics, the strongest among them being the AFSCME leadership, point to the dismal record of the leading private prison operators, such as the Corrections Corporation of America and Wackenhut Corrections Corporation. They have demonstrated repeatedly in other states that they are better at making a profit than preserving public safety.

Rather than cutting the state's costs of incarcerating convicted criminals, private prisons will gut the economies of rural communities and will erode public safety, Local 52 has asserted at hearings and meetings.

Union leaders have also pointed out that all the profits from the operation of a private prison would be taken out of Alaska to an out-of-state corporate headquarters.

In addition, employees of such a private company could walk off the job, whereas the public workers of Alaska are not permitted to strike under the state law.

Called a $200 million boondoggle (that would be the cost to the state for construction and improvement over about 15 years), the state still would have to pay for the yearly operation of the prison, which is even more than the initial commitment of $200 million.

The bill, which has passed the House, is strongly opposed by the Alaska AFL-CIO, the Western Alaska Building and Construction Trades Council, ASEA/AFSCME Local 52, NEA-Alaska, and the Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau Labor Councils.

As we are going to press, Local 52 Business Manager Chuck O'Connell predicted the plan to build the prison as a private operation would fail.