The Ramsey County Board has voted down a proposal to eliminate laundry jobs in the Ramsey Nursing Home and transfer the work to inmates at the County Workhouse.

Tom Burke, business representative for AFSCME Local 1076, said that to his knowledge, it was the first time the county attempted to use prison labor to replace existing county jobs.

Local 1076 represents about 150 employees at the nursing home, including the half-dozen laundry positions that would have been eliminated.

The proposal died in a budget committee hearing Aug. 2, Burke said, after Commissioner Jim McDonough acted to remove the necessary money from the corrections department budget and adequately finance the jobs in the nursing home budget. Commissioners Rafael Ortega, Victoria Reinhardt and Janice Rettman backed McDonough's motion, Burke said.

McDonugh, a union Glazier, said: 'I have a real problem substituting imate labor for paying jobs. There's a lot we can do with inmates, but when we look at employees who are working, who are doing things we need in society, we have to be careful about taking away their livelihood.'

Burke said the six employees would have been offered other jobs, but that unions had to act to prevent a precedent on use of prison labor. 'I definitely credit the resolution passed by the Trades and Labor Assembly and the letters that were sent to commissioners for raising their awareness,' he said.

Burke said that before opposition surfaced, 'Some commissioners were treating it as a simple budget issue. It wasn't being treated as a policy issue. But if they could do this at the laundry, they could eliminate other jobs, too. The implications were so great.'

The county is still considering using inmates to perform grounds work at a new golf course being built adjacent to the Workhouse in Maplewood, Burke said.

This article was written for the Aug. 29, 2001, issue of The Union Advocate newspaper. Used by permission. The Union Advocate is the official publication of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@mtn.org