their dues coerced and taken from them into and dumped into these losing campaigns when these unions themselves have pensions that are going bankrupt and a lot of these crony union bosses are taking all the money. i don t want to run out of time before we talk about one of my favorite stories of the day, the obama administration using prisoners to make solar panels for federal agencies and push a green energy agenda, they re using hundreds of inmates who earn between $0.23 and $1.15 an hour. look at you know, it makes me wonder still solar isn t profitable. how is that possible when your labor are prisoners who are basically working for free? this is amazing! yes, this is amazing. the free beacon did a good job of exposing this program and i guess the joke is, you know, what has black, white and stripes and green all over? this unicorn program and i think what s significant is it all goes back to chicago, one of the great beneficiaries of this program is exlon corporation that
some fleece and that takes care of about 58 of our employees. the majority of our employees, if we did not get this t-shirt contract, it could affect 115 of these people that you see standing here with me. yeah. all right. it s something by the way, we should point out we did talk to the bureau of prisons and asked them for comments. they told us the case is under review. so with any luck, all of you folks will keep your jobs out there in kentucky. chris reynolds & company, thank you very much for joining us live. good luck to you. thank you. what do you think about that? federal prisoners getting paid $0.23 an hour competing against people in the private industry. does that seem fair to you? e-mail us, friends at foxnews.com. meanwhile, he s saving lives for a living. but now, cops think this firefighter s own life is in jeopardy. he s gone missing without a trace. his story. and the president s decision to apologize for the quran burnings has many outraged but not dana perino
industries pays $0.23 an hour to prisoners to make things. you have a much higher wage and you ve got benefits as well. that s correct. our average is close to $12 an hour and we do pay a certain percentage of the medical, vision, dental, and our employees have such a difficult time just dealing with the idea that our federal prisoner who should be paying a debt to society could possibly take their jobs. they can t imagine. right. plus chris, the fact that fpi, federal prison industries, pays $0.23 an hour. you re north of $10 an hour. you can t compete with that! and now it sounds like there s a possibility that people serving time for, in some cases, serious, you know, serious crimes could take the jobs of all those men and women behind you. tell me the reaction on the factory floor there in kentucky to that. well, i think when we first started discussing it, the employees could not believe that
this job goes to the inmates? that s correct. when did you find out that this contract that you have had since 1997, it sounds like it s going away and the federal government is going to award it to federal prisoners who make, what, $0.23 an hour? that s absolutely right. we ve been instructed that the federal prison industry intends to take the product away and have it made in a federal prison. now, michael, is this is this in response to the cutbacks at the pentagon, at the department of defense? is that what they re saying to you? no, this has nothing to do with cutbacks. this is just that federal prison industry needs additional work and they re choosing to take it away from my workers. well, i m sure your workers must be absolutely crestfallen that they will be replaced making these jackets that, as we can see, the president has worn for a number of years. by, you know, felons, people sitting in the federal lockups.
right now, when the federal prison industries compete with the private business like yourself, they re going to always be able to produce it for a lot less if they re paying $0.23 an hour. that s exactly right. but i would add that they get paid comparable prices to what we get paid so the taxpayer doesn t get a particular benefit there either. very quickly, can you explain that? how is it they can pay $0.23 an hour and you ll have to pay at least minimum wage but the taxpayers are still going to pay the same amount of money? that s fact that s a factual piece of information. no one at fpi or the government seems to be able to explain that. well, we did reach out to the defense logistics agency. they confirmed the story over the phone to our producers but they would not send us a statement in writing, apparently. so michael, we know that a lot of people down in washington watch this program in the morning and maybe they somebody can step in to save the