Prisoners' Union/Nationwide Organization

Prisoners' Union/Nationwide Organization
(GG/BO)

Gefangenen Gewerkschaft / Bundesweite Organisation
Founded	2004
Headquarters	Berlin, Germany
Location	Germany
Members	400
Key people	Manuel Matzke, spkoesperson
Website	https://ggbo.de

The Prisoners' Union/Nationwide Organization (GG/BO) is a German prisoners' union, i.e. an association that advocates for the labor rights of prisoners in German prisons. According to its own information, it was founded in 2014 in the Tegel Prison. Spokesperson is Manuel Matzke.

Fair pay in prisons

In most German federal states, prisoners are required to work in prison. It is intended to serve resocialization. They work in prison companies. There is no minimum wage. In 2020, they earned between 1.37 euros and 2.30 euros per hour.

The prisoners' union sees the current system as "exploitation". The low hourly wages convey the message that honest work doesn't pay off. The GG/BO demands that prisoners should receive the minimum wage. At the same time, they should share in the high costs of imprisonment through taxes. The economy is currently using the prisons as a “special economic zone”. The union assumes that 80 percent of prisoners produce for external service providers. GG/BO said, state judiciary makes prisoners free of social security contributions available to the free economy.

In 2023, the federal constitution court in 2023 decided that the federal states must re-regulate the relevant laws by the end of June 2025 at the latest. They should also explicitly specify and name what benefits the prisoners receive in addition to their specific wages, for example contributions to unemployment insurance or health benefits. The bottom line is that a significantly higher hourly wage for prisoners is not yet certain.

History

In May 2014, the prisoners' union/nationwide organization (GG/BO) was founded in the Berlin-Tegel prison by the prisoners Oliver Rast and Mehmet-Sadik Aykol. The organizational form is that of an unincorporated association. Oliver Rast has now been released in 2017.

Hunger strike in the Butzbach prison 2015

Oliver Rast, then spokesman for the GG/BO, announced on December 2, 2015, that prisoners in the Butzbach correctional facility had gone on a hunger strike. The background was their situation in the correctional facility. The prisoners obtained an internal prison paper that showed that the labor costs for the jumping mats, that they had to produce were 0.1 to 0.32 percent of the sales price. 130 of the approximately 500 prisoners in the high-security prison had signed a petition in which they demanded, among other things, “full freedom of trade unions behind bars”, the payment of the German minimum wage for their work in the institution's own workshops and inclusion in the pension insurance. A local newspaper reported that a union representative in the Butzbach prison was said to have been placed in solitary arrest for his activities. Jürgen Rößner, a GG representative, has been locked up for 23 hours since the end of September 2015, said Oliver Rast. A spokesman for the Hesse Ministry of Justice denied this. According to unconfirmed information, 4 to 5 prisoners were on hunger strike in December.

“Simply refusing to work would be legally considered a ‘mutiny’ because of the compulsory work, which would be severely punished. During a hunger strike, the prisoners are released from work for medical reasons,” said Jörg Nowak, explaining the form of the protest. It was not clear exactly how many inmates were on strike, as only postal communication is possible in correctional facilities.

Oliver Rast feared that the prison management would put massive pressure on the strikers.