They are pleased to do it

Metro Service has been using a prison labor broker in order to help it bust up a wildcat strike staged by garbage hoppers it had already outsourced to a day labor staffing agency.  According to their spokesperson, they are "pleased" to be able to do this.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration said that under its contract, Metro Service Group is supposed to pay employees at least $10.25 an hour. In a statement on Monday, the company acknowledged that it signed a contract to pay the inmate laborers $9.25 an hour. The company said the inmates' pay, which has yet to be invoiced, would be "amended" to meet the minimum.

"We'd like to add that, while hoppers went on strike and while we were unable to secure a regular stream of private sector workers to fill their spots during their strike, we are pleased to be able to provide work-release-approved inmates with meaningful work at a good wage so that they can more easily transition back into society," said a company spokesman.

This is, and I'm very sorry, a total load of garbage from Metro.  This isn't about helping anybody "transition back into society." It is about exploiting a perverse for-profit incarceration system where firms like Metro collect discounted labor from people like Hootie Lockhart who then collect fees from the prisoners themselves.

The work-release inmates were set to receive $9.25 an hour, according to Lock5 manager Hootie Lockhart. He said he usually tries to secure more pay, but the economic crisis has made it hard to find well-paying jobs.

The inmates stand to keep much less than that at the end of the day, moreover. In an arrangement outlined in state law, Lock5 takes up to 64 percent of inmate pay to cover its own expenses, Lockhart said.

This is what Metro is "pleased" to be able to do.  Maybe episodes like this provide us with a moment to examine the morality of these practices and whether the city should be paying for them.

Or maybe not.

A Cantrell spokesman voiced no objections to the use of work-release inmates — noting that the city uses them during Carnival season — but New Orleans City Councilman Jason Williams said he was disappointed.

He also said he was "deeply concerned" about the original workers' situation.

Jason is running for DA. While it's good to hear he's concerned about the striking workers, we might like to also hear him comment on the exploitation of victims of the criminal punishment system as well.