The United States have developed a new weapon that destroys people but it leaves buildings standing. It's called the stock market." —Jay Leno
This blog has been contacted by Corrections Corporation of America staff members who are upset that they have had to go several years without a raise. With this in mind we have decided to start a new blog series on The 270 View website aimed at showing just how uninterested we feel CCA is in compensating its own prison workers for the work they do.
From what we are told CCA has used the poor national economy as an excuse to not give raises to CCA employees for two to three years now. The idea that CCA could not give raises to any employees is really odd since CCA continues to post profits and not losses.
At the facilities Stewart Detention Center many of the workers drive very far distances to get to the facility. I would imagine that this is true at most of its facilities since a great many of them are located in very small rural areas with a tiny labor pool. With gas approaching $4.00 a gallon and other cost of living indicators going up one could probably very effectively argue that these workers are actually now making much less of an hourly wage than when CCA put this pay freeze in place.
Today we will examine CCA's stock repurchasing plan. A copy of CCA's press release on this can be found here. In short what it says is that today CCA has decided to spend $350 million instead of $250 million to buy back CCA stock. So lets do some math here. On CCA's website it claims 17,000 workers here. Now these numbers are rather large (But not even close to the enormous number of tax dollars being funneled at CCA) but we will still try and work with them for are faithful blog reading public. If I figured right $350,000,000 divided by 17,000 workers equals a spending of $20,588 dollars per CCA employee. I'm not sure what the typical worker makes at CCA but I'm sure that some of them make barely that amount themselves. It is also worth noting that if CCA had just left the plan at the original rate of $250 million then CCA could of spent that extra $100 million it had lying around on employees (At a rate of $5,882 per employee).
CCA might argue that by doing this they are actually helping employees stock be more valuable. But honestly do you think they would prefer this over a raise? After all the companies shareholders would just hold a worthless share of stock if it was not for the employees hard work (As well as those really profitable inmates and detainees that it holds within it's prison walls).
The fact that CCA spends mostly tax payer supplied money made through state, local and national detention/prison contracts at a furious pace is also really ironic when the company continues to sputter like a drunken pirates parrot that somehow the taxpayers are getting a good value for there tax dollars here. Now I am aware that CCA does have other revenue streams too like the over charging of inmate phone calls and high priced inmate commissaries, but the reality is that most of it's funding comes from over charging taxpayers. I mean really how else does it have $350 million dollars lying around?
In this blogs opinion Corrections Corporation of America has found a great way to rob the taxpayers piggy bank but apparently feels that the getaway driver (the workers) are not entitled to a cut of the spoils.
Keep in mind that all opinions expressed here are just that. Please cross check anything you read before forming your own opinion.
