pants with the legs of different sizes and pockets at different heightslittle durability, loss of color after three washes… To the officials of the prisons run by the Ministry of the Interior they don’t like work clothes at all delivered by the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions. Its majority union, ACAIP-UGT, has issued a note on Monday complaining to the ministry headed by the minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
The reason: the publication in the BOE on April 5 of a new tender for which Penitentiary Institutions recommission prisoners of penitentiary work workshops the preparation of the new uniform for the nearly 25,000 civil servants and workers of the labor personnel of the prisons. “The current uniform has a very poor textile quality -says the union note- and a lousy confection because its realization is entrusted to the inmates of the productive workshops of various penitentiary centers without adequate quality control”.
They refer to convicts who work for the EETPFE (State Entity Penitentiary Work and Training for Employment), one of the training branches of Prisons. A work that, in his opinion, presents “bad labeling and sizing, the finishes are of poor quality…” . The entity that protests has already complained to the general secretary, Angel Luis Ortizthat it be an external company that makes the garments.
Outsourced uniforms
According to ACAIP-UGT, “the penitentiary group feels discriminated against when they see how other bodies of the Ministry of the Interior such as the National Police or the Civil Guard They have a uniform of better quality and tendered by external companies of recognized solvency”.
The discontent had already been brewing since the summer, when the unions asked for boots similar to those of the Magnum firm, and finally they will be given footwear with “very basic technical specifications that have nothing to do with what we had agreed on,” says an ACAIP spokesperson.
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The State Entity for Penitentiary Labor has the objective of helping the reintegration of prisoners “increasing their employability” through training. In his public declaration of intentions, he points out as essential “the production of our production workshops, in which the highest quality is offered in the products we manufacture”.
It seems unlikely that clothing will be outsourced. Prisiones has eight textile workshops (three in Andalusia, two in Madrid and Castilla y León and one more in Cantabria), which the entity outlines in its Strategic Plan for this year and next, considering them “very suitable for taking on productions of a certain complexity “. They are workshops in which “in recent years a strong investment has been made in modern machinery (…) staff training (…) hiring Workshop Masters…” According to the Plan, up to now they have undertaken orders from Penitentiary Institutions “with a high level of satisfaction on their part” .