Prison factories team with furniture makers
The office-furniture industry has struggled with two seemingly incongruous problems for years: What to do with worn-out furniture, and a battle against state and federal prison furniture-making operations.
A new pilot program created by an office-furniture industry trade group and the state may help solve both problems.
The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) and the state announced Tuesday that state prisons factories would begin disassembling furniture.
The association calls it a win-win concept. Prisons get the scrap sale proceeds and can offer jobs to inmates not competing with office-furniture makers, and manufacturers solve the problem of furniture going into landfills.
“We believe it can be a model that can be expanded beyond the state government to the private sector,” said Brad Miller, the manager of communications and government affairs for the trade-industry group.
If it expands to the federal level, the program could help replace actual furniture production that directly competes with furniture from companies such as Steelcase Inc., Herman Miller Inc. and Haworth Inc.
The office-furniture industry long has been at odds with prison factories they say compete on lucrative government contracts while paying pennies an hour to inmate workers.
The pilot program also would begin to address a pressing issues for the furniture industry: how to dispose of used furniture.
For decades, office furniture-makers have sought a way to close the loop by giving its customers a way to recycle furniture.
The cost of stripping off fabric and tearing out foam has kept scrap companies out of the business. www.mlive.com
