This week, the Public Service Association of South Australia lodged a workplace health and safety dispute over conditions at Port Augusta Prison. The union argues that during periods of short staffing, correctional officers are still expected to supervise the prison’s commercial laundry, leaving staff vulnerable if violence, medical emergencies or other critical incidents occur. If the allegations are correct, those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. Every worker has the right to a safe workplace, and no employer should compromise safety in pursuit of operational or commercial demands.
What caught our attention, however, was not simply the union’s concern for its members. It was General Secretary Charlotte Watson’s statement that a safe prison protects “correctional officers, prisoners, rehabilitation outcomes and ultimately the wider community.”
If that concern for prisoners is genuine, then we look forward to the PSA joining the fight for the other workforce inside Port Augusta Prison.
Because there is another group of people working in that commercial laundry every day. They are the imprisoned workers whose labour fulfills contracts for mining companies, aged care providers and other commercial clients. They are the people whose work keeps the laundry operating. Yet unlike the correctional officers represented by the PSA, they receive none of the workplace protections that Australians rightly regard as fundamental. They are paid a fraction of the minimum wage – confirmed by Freedom of Information documents to be as low as $1.64 per day. They have no meaningful ability to bargain over their conditions, no right to withdraw their labour, no independent industrial representation, and no protections under the Work Health and Safety Act which explicitly excludes working prisoners from cover..
The union cannot now say it does not know this system exists.
Its own dispute acknowledges that the commercial laundry is sufficiently important that it continues operating even during “runshorts”, when staffing levels elsewhere in the prison have been reduced. According to reporting, the workload has increased following the extension of commercial laundry contracts servicing Carrapateena and Roxby Downs mines and aged care providers. If production continues despite staffing shortages because contractual obligations must still be met, then we are no longer talking simply about a rehabilitative prison program. We are talking about an industrial operation whose commercial commitments appear significant enough to shape operational decisions inside a prison.
That should concern all of us.
The Department for Correctional Services continues to describe the laundry as providing “vocational training”, “meaningful work” and opportunities to reduce reoffending. We have heard this language for decades. Rehabilitation is repeatedly invoked whenever prison industries are questioned. But there comes a point where we have to ask whether “rehabilitation” is describing what is happening, or whether it has become a convenient justification for extracting cheap slave labour from people who cannot freely negotiate the conditions under which they work.
If imprisoned people are undertaking work that fulfills commercial contracts, then they are workers. If they are workers, they should enjoy the same fundamental workplace rights as every other worker in Australia. That includes the right to safe working conditions, proper occupational health and safety protections, independent reporting of workplace injuries, fair remuneration for their labour, and genuine mechanisms for raising concerns without fear of reprisal. The fact that someone is serving a sentence does not somehow make unsafe work acceptable or justify wages that would be unlawful in any other workplace.
The irony in this story is difficult to ignore. According to reports, correctional officers have begun referring to the laundry as a “sweatshop”. The Department has been quick to point out that this is not a literal description. But jokes only work because they contain a kernel of truth. Everyone involved appears to recognise that the commercial laundry has become something much larger than a simple training exercise. Everyone understands that substantial productive labour is taking place behind those prison walls.
The only real disagreement is whose safety matters, and whose exploitation remains invisible.
When correctional officers are placed at risk because of understaffing, the union rightly mobilises. It lodges disputes. It demands action. It insists that employers cannot compromise safety in pursuit of other priorities. Those are exactly the principles unions exist to defend.
Yet imprisoned workers remain excluded from those same conversations. They continue working for poverty wages in industries that generate economic value for the state and commercial partners, without access to the industrial rights that organised labour has fought generations to secure. If the PSA believes, as it says, that prison safety includes prisoners, then there is an obvious place to begin. Stand alongside the imprisoned workers whose labour underpins these industries. Support calls for proper wages. Support genuine occupational health and safety protections. Support the recognition that productive labour performed inside prisons should not exist outside the standards that govern every other Australian workplace.
Earlier this month, RAD Faction examined Australia’s prison labour system and argued that it increasingly resembles a form of state-sanctioned labour exploitation. The developments at Port Augusta only reinforce that analysis. When commercial contracts become so important that production continues despite staffing shortages, the line between rehabilitation and exploitation becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. At that point, prison labour is no longer simply about preparing people for employment after release. It has become an industry in its own right, sustained by a workforce that cannot negotiate its wages, leave its employer or meaningfully challenge its conditions.
If the PSA is serious when it says that prison safety extends to prisoners as well as correctional officers, then we welcome its voice in that broader struggle, and invite them to contact us. Because the sweatshop it is now describing has never simply been about understaffing. It has always been about a system that depends upon the labour of imprisoned people while denying them the wages, rights and protections that every other worker is expected to receive.
That is not rehabilitation. It is exploitation. And the fact that it occurs behind prison walls does not make it any less deserving of public scrutiny.
