Vol. 77/No. 47      December 30, 2013

The average wage for prisoners is $3 a day, a rate the government set in 1981. Inmates now have to pay for necessities like shampoo, soap, deodorant, stamps and stationery, which used to be provided by the prison. Government officials condemned the strike as an “offensive to hard-working law-abiding Canadians.”

“We’re working citizens as well,” a prisoner at the Donnacona Penitentiary near Quebec City said in a radio interview. “We’re all human beings.”

Prisoners suspended the strike at the end of October as a gesture of good faith to encourage talks between their representatives and prison and government officials.

Like the 30,000 prisoners in California who carried out a hunger strike during the summer against the brutality of solitary confinement, the fighting workers behind bars in Canada deserve the support and solidarity of working people everywhere.

John Steele
Montreal, Quebec

Experiences on railroad
My dad was a railroad electrician. The railroads have had the alerter/acknowledgement system capability going back to the 1950s when he was working there. In fact, the railroads were allowed by the Federal Railroad Administration to remove the system in some instances because the railroad companies argued it was needlessly slowing down operations.

Also, Metro-North is operated like other mass transportation systems, where tax dollars are funneled into the system because of the “inability” to make profits directly off the system. Officially the rolling stock belongs to the State of Connecticut.

However, just like hospitals and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, managers and professionals make big salaries so as to be competitive with the “private” sector and money is pumped into the “private” sector through lucrative contracts, rents and equipment purchases.

Kim O’Brien
Willimantic, Conn.  
 
 
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