California Prisoners Organize Work Slowdown to Protest Degrading Conditions

To address unjust policies and conditions, more than 70 incarcerated workers inside Centinela State Prison collectively decided last fall to “slow down” production for the California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA). According to workers who spoke to Prism, the organizing effort was successful — and there may soon be another slowdown.

CALPIA, also called the PIA, employs between 5,800 and 7,000 incarcerated individuals inside facilities controlled by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). The PIA earns substantial revenue by selling goods produced through prison labor, including office furniture, clothing, gloves, license plates, and cell equipment. Customers include universities and government agencies, such as the California Department of State Hospitals and the California National Guard, among others.

The PIA also has multiple contracts with CDCR, according to records obtained by Prism. One agreement for Career Technical Education training is worth $7.8 million through June 2026. Another $2.3 million agreement contracts CALPIA to develop and oversee vocational training programs inside prisons. In a third, CDCR pays the PIA more than $38 million to provide laundry services inside prisons, including Centinela.

Nearly 39,000 imprisoned people have job assignments in California state prisons, where, until recently, some made as little as $0.16 per hour. Last year, incarcerated workers in the state received a very minor wage increase, though a majority still make less than $1 an hour.

According to sources inside, Centinela’s incarcerated workers provide CALPIA with revenue, in part by making boxer shorts for California prisons.

Cortez Washington is incarcerated at Centinela and works for the PIA as an operational supervisor of production. He and other workers who spoke to Prism likened this work to “slave labor,” both because of the pay and because many prison jobs aren’t optional.

Last fall, Californians rejected legislation that would have banned forced prison labor. If passed, the law would have changed the state constitution, allowing incarcerated people to refuse prison work.

Washington said the PIA workers are paid “pennies on the dollar” for their labor and that CALPIA has a pay scale that caps how much incarcerated workers can earn. The max is $1 per hour; Washington makes around $0.80 per hour.

“It’s very coercive,” explained John, a Centinela worker who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “You can’t just quit. You’ll get [a] disciplinary write-up.”

Although California voters decided not to allow incarcerated people the ability to withhold their labor, around the same time, workers inside Centinela decided to take matters into their own hands. According to workers who spoke to Prism, meager pay was just one of the issues that led them to organize.

Degrading Conditions

According to sources inside, one major cause of frustration was the prison’s failure to set a regular schedule for incarcerated workers to visit the canteen, forcing incarcerated CALPIA employees to regularly go without basic goods, like hygiene products.

California prison regulations state that incarcerated workers with full-time assignments should receive the maximum monthly canteen access. However, incarcerated workers who produce undergarments for the PIA work all day, delaying their ability to purchase commissary items. Some also miss mail calls, which means packages sent by loved ones can be delayed as long as a week, John explained.

On top of limited access to mail and necessary (though wildly overpriced) canteen items, CALPIA workers told Prism that their jobs also involve daily degradation. Each day, workers must strip in front of cameras and their peers.

John, who said he was removed from CALPIA labor for a rules violation, explained that at the end of a shift, incarcerated workers have to undress before walking through a metal detector, presumably to detect theft. John said he never understood why workers couldn’t simply walk through the metal detector normally and only undergo inspection if the detector went off.

“When we strip out, everybody [sees] us,” he said, noting that there can be as many as 12 people in the room, plus whoever might be behind the prison cameras. “We are told to squat and cough sometimes, to raise our genitals. And that’s when they give us our clothes, right in front of all the other inmates and other staff there.”

The cameras that record unclothed incarcerated workers are part of CDCR’s Audio-Video Surveillance System (AVSS). The AVSS is intended “to enhance public safety and facility security” via “real-time monitoring and recording” that enables “investigations and after-the-fact reviews,” CDCR’s Department Operations Manual states. The images of unclothed workers aren’t fully accessible to others, according to CDCR press secretary Terri Hardy.

“AVSS images taken in areas where unclothed body searches occur are blurred and accessible for viewing only in limited circumstances,” Hardy said in an email. “Only Institution Security Units may view unblurred images and only if there is a pending investigation.”

Charlie Hinton, a longtime Bay Area-based activist, shared emails with Prism from a CDCR official regarding the recorded strip searches inside Centinela. The official told Hinton last May that the prison warden was aware of incarcerated workers’ privacy concerns, and the issue was raised through an advisory council representing people incarcerated inside Centinela.

In a May 2024 email, the CDCR official told Hinton that a team at the prison — including the warden — were discussing ways “to better inform the incarcerated population” about the search process “to alleviate concerns related to privacy.” In another email later the same month, the official told Hinton that the AVSS technology complied with the standards set by the Prison Rape Elimination Act and that the searches take places “in designated areas to ensure a level of privacy.”

One former worker told Prism that at the end of their shifts, incarcerated workers almost always see each other unclothed during the strip searches. Even if they’re just joking, he said guys make sexual comments on the yard after seeing someone naked.

“This has happened to me,” he said, noting that jokes were made about his genitalia.

Taking Collective Action

By late October 2024, the frustrations of imprisoned CALPIA employees hit a breaking point. They decided to take collective action, but they first had significant challenges to overcome.

“Everything is racial and segregated in here because that’s the way the administration has pretty much had the population,” Washington said, adding that racial and ethnic groups are organized “hierarchically.”

“They have to get the permission from one individual in order for them to do anything,” he explained.

Those in positions of authority then give instructions and approval. But in some cases, they don’t.

“They may be receiving some type of favors or something from the administration, so they don’t want to mess up what they have going … because if you get to rocking the boat and there’s a ripple effect, and hey, then there’s a problem,” Washington said.

The California prison system has a history of segregating prisoners by race. Ethnoracial divisions and internal hierarchies inside Centinela, along with the uneven racial composition of the PIA workforce, made collective action a difficult task.

A small de facto organizing committee that included Washington didn’t let the situation deter them. Their organizing efforts required a “delicate dance” to gain support for taking action.

Washington said workers decided on a slowdown rather than a work stoppage because they could either be fired for totally refusing to work, or the administration could shut down the yard.

“So our thing was like, don’t stop working. We’ll just slow it down,” he said.

Incarcerated workers agreed about the slowdown as they walked to their shift, “away from the ear of the supervisors,” said a former worker who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation.

The effort garnered almost unanimous support from workers, who had grown tired of being unable to eat due to limited canteen access.

“By doing this, I guess the hope was that they could address the grievances that guys [were having] there, from the canteen, to getting their packages on time, to putting towels [in] the restroom — [and] air conditioning,” said another worker who wanted to remain anonymous. “We’re right here by the desert. When it’s summer, it’s a sweatshop in there, man. It’s hot as fuck.”

A majority of the workers significantly slowed their pace, ensuring the PIA’s quota for undergarments would not be met until some of their demands were met — or at least until they could meaningfully negotiate.

Washington estimated that workers’ labor nets the PIA between $30,000 and $100,000 each day, which means that any slowdown in work provides a huge financial blow to the business.

“That was a scary situation because that’s a cash cow,” Washington said. CALPIA department heads visited incarcerated workers to ask why they weren’t meeting quotas, he recalled. Retaliation ensued in the form of write-ups, which can impact a person’s release date.

Hinton worked with organizers to publicly share a call for people on the outside to email CALPIA fabric officials in Centinela, demanding that they afford workers adequate time for commissary. If unwilling, incarcerated workers called for the removal of a CALPIA site manager who workers said opposed changing the schedule to allow for regularly scheduled canteen time.

To spread their message far and wide, Hinton shared information with the California Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (CA IWOC), an organization affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The call to action was posted on CA IWOC’s Instagram page on Nov. 7.

“Email zaps have been fairly effective, and I think they’re clearly even more effective when they’re combined with inside people taking action like this,” explained a CA IWOC organizer who wanted to remain anonymous. “We’ve always understood as IWW members, as workers, that taking direct action, like refusing to comply in a large enough group, is in fact what gets things done.”

Hinton also shared the call to action with an email list dedicated to prison-related organizing efforts.

Within a week, the canteen policy changed, Hinton said.

CALPIA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Organizing Continues

Washington said he and other incarcerated workers ultimately spoke to the prison’s administration and the warden, reaching a resolution that afforded them regular and adequate canteen shopping time each week. However, workers say the PIA site manager undermined the agreement, refusing to allow workers time off to shop. So the work slowdown continued through November until the site manager was eventually removed.

The Centinela warden did not respond to requests for comment. Hardy, the CDCR spokesperson, verified to Prism that the canteen issues were resolved.

Earlier this year, work resumed at a regular pace, though there were only minor improvements in conditions, according to sources inside. Washington said those in power put a “Band-Aid on a situation that they can fix, totally,” adding that workers are still demanding an end to the “dehumanizing” and “traumatizing” recorded body searches.

Outside of prison, there is no other workplace in the U.S. that could get away with requiring its workers to strip in front of their co-workers and a camera — and Washington said the PIA workers shouldn’t have to tolerate the policy. He filed a grievance last year with CDCR about the strip-search policy that was initially denied, so he appealed. In a February 2025 response from the CDCR Office of Appeals, Washington was told that privacy concerns were essentially moot, given that there are tinted windows where searches are conducted and posted signs that inform others not to enter.

The Office of Appeals acknowledged, though, that the supervisor assigned to his claim did not collect evidence regarding Washington’s assertion that staff intimidated incarcerated workers during searches. Thus, his claim was granted. “The Office of Grievances shall open a new grievance log number, gather, and preserve all relevant evidence, and answer this claim on its merit,” said the notice Washington received from the Office of Appeals. “Specifically, the institution shall review any and all documentation, conduct all relevant clarifying interviews, and provide a substantive response regarding the alleged claim.”

Washington is now preparing to file a lawsuit regarding the policy — and there’s precedent for it. A 2017 lawsuit alleging harassment by a CALPIA supervisor at California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran is still moving forward. Another lawsuit filed in January of last year by a worker incarcerated at California State Prison Solano alleges that a CALPIA supervisor dissuaded him from filing an incident report after he suffered second-degree burns on the job.

Inside Centinela, Washington said incarcerated workers plan to continue organizing and hope to address the unjust payscale. He is also in conversation with CA IWOC about unionizing incarcerated employees.

“Not just PIA; the entire workforce,” Washington emphasized. “We’re just going to have to come together and do it ourselves.”

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.