Bloomberg Campaign Exposed for Exploiting Prison Labor
michael bloomberg raises his hand
Gage Skidmore / Flickr
Fundraising phone calls are the bane of many campaigns' (and voters')
existence. When it comes to wooing the wealthiest donors, elected officials
typically complain about the amount of time spent soliciting funds. "There
have been decades and decades of members of Congress losing their lives to
'dialing for dollars,' " Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a law professor at Stetson
University who studies political fundraising, told Marketplacein March.
At lower donation levels it's an equally thankless (but less lucrative) job,
full of hang-ups and angry voters wondering how a campaign got their number
and why they're being bothered in the middle of dinner.
Unfortunately, the prisoners contracted to work on Bloomberg's presidential
campaign had no choice, as The Intercept reported Tuesday. Michael Bloomberg
2020 hired ProCom, a New Jersey-based call center company that owns centers
in New Jersey and Oklahoma; two of the Oklahoma call centers operate out of
state prisons. "In at least one of the two prisons," The Intercept's John
Washington reports, "incarcerated people were contracted to make calls on
behalf of the Bloomberg campaign."
Washington continues:
"
According to a source, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution,
people incarcerated at the Dr. Eddie Warrior Correctional Center, a
minimum-security women's prison with a capacity of more than 900, were
making calls to California on behalf of Bloomberg. The people were required
to end their calls by disclosing that the calls were paid for by the
Bloomberg campaign. They did not disclose, however, that they were calling
from behind bars.
Michael Bloomberg is worth $55.9 billion, according to the Forbesreal-time
wealth tracker. John Scallan, a founder of ProCom, told The Intercept that
his company pays $7.25 per hour, Oklahoma's minimum wage, to the state's
Department of Corrections, which then pays the prisoners. The Intercept
found conflicting information on exactly how much of that money gets to
prisoners. The Department of Corrections website says the maximum monthly
salary prisoners can receive is $20. Scallan claims ProCom workers earn
more.
According to a 2017 study from the Prison Policy Institute, Oklahoma prisons
working in nonstate-owned industries typically make 54 cents an hour, at
most.
The news comes just as Bloomberg attempts to reckon with his criminal
justice policies as mayor of New York City. During his tenure as mayor, from
2002 to 2013, and for years afterward, he was a vocal supporter of
stop-and-frisk, a policing strategy that gives wide latitude for officers to
stop anyone they deem suspicious-and one that disproportionately targeted
black and Latino people. This November Bloomberg reversed his position,
telling the crowd at a predominantly black church, "I was wrong. And I'm
sorry." The New York Times called the apology"almost unheard-of," and "a
remarkable concession by a 77-year-old billionaire not known for
self-doubt."
The campaign said it has ended the relationship with ProCom. "We didn't know
about this and we never would have allowed it if we had," Bloomberg
spokesperson Julie Wood told The Intercept, which also reported that "[the
campaign] said it has asked vendors to do a better job of vetting
subcontractors in the future."
Later that day, Bloomberg posted a longer apology to his Twitter account:
"
Earlier today, a news outlet accurately reported that a subcontractor for
one of our vendors was using prison workers to make phone calls on behalf of
my campaign. After learning this, we immediately ended our relationship with
that company.
Full statement below: pic.twitter.com/0KJ8y8Iqxj
- Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) December 24, 2019
Ilana Novick
Blogger / Editorial Assistant
