"Atwater is just the latest and probably the worst" example of inmates being exploited in the name of providing them with job skills, said Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), an advocacy group. "It's pretty clear that it's a way to use a low wage, but really it's an involuntary servitude type of approach to dealing with e-waste, and I think that's pretty scandalous." Novicky, who declined to specify how much prisoners earn, has a ready counter to that charge. "My cost structure is so different from the private sector's -- I have security costs they never, never could imagine," he said. "My staff-to-inmate ratio is so different from foreman-to-general-worker ratio...So overall, we're market competitive, and that's what we want to be." The money the inmates earn goes into an "inmate responsibility" fund, which helps to cover child support, alimony and court costs, as well as commissary privileges and money for when the prisoners are released. SVTC's Smith pointed to the need for the electronics industry to develop a recycling and reuse system that is producer-financed -- that is, underwritten by the makers of PCs, TV sets, printers and so on. "The US is the main global laggard in this whole issue. Since we have refused to embrace producer responsibility, we're relying on prison labour instead," Smith said. But an executive at one of the largest handlers of obsolete electronics in the country took a more benign view of Unicor's recycling mission. "We'd be happy to work with the federal prison system, with the caveat that none (of the waste) be landfilled or exported to the Far East," said Doug Steen, president of Belmont Technology Remarketing, based in Chicago. "The bottom line is that no incremental lead enters our society." A typical computer monitor could contain 1.8kg to 2.7kg of lead. Unicor has been in the electronics recycling business since 1996. The Atwater facility, located at the former Castle Air Force Base in central California, joins similar operations at prisons in Florida, New Jersey, Ohio and Texas. Two other e-scrap facilities will open in Pennsylvania and Texas by the end of the year, Novicky said. With 50,000 square feet of production area and an additional 30,000 square feet of storage, Atwater will probably be about twice the size of the other facilities, Novicky said. It should begin operations in March, though it won't be fully operational until the end of September. Unicor, which operates 110 factories in 90 locations, receives no government subsidies and must be self-sustaining through the sale of manufactured goods, Novicky said. Products range from medical apparel and terry-cloth towels to office furniture and licence plates for federal vehicles. The inmate labour is voluntary, Novicky said. "We work them hard, but they enjoy it," Novicky said. "They like to be productive; they like working on electronics, frankly. It's technology -- it beats sitting at a sewing machine or making furniture. It provides them the opportunity to learn something that, quite frankly, they can use when they get out."
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