do inmates work for pay in san quentin prison?

The highest prison wage in the prison is paid by a joint venture program. It is a private company that operates using inmate labor. Their wages are minimum wage with the payments going to three different places. The prisoner has to pay room and board, a share goes to a bank account to assist the inmate upon release from prison. As well as a portion of the prisoners pay check goes to a family member if desired and some to the inmates trust account if desired. The second highest pay in prison is from working in the inmate daily labor program that is run by the state. The pay scale ranges from eighty to a hundred and fifty dollars a month. The type of work is hard labor like welding or construction type work that requires special skill labor prisoners. The next top pay scale is the PIA (Prison Industry Authority). Shops such as the mattress factory, text tiles, wood shop and upholstery. These jobs start the pay scale at thirty cents an hour and the highest is one dollar an hour. It is normally four to five prisoners assigned to each pay scale. The lowest paying jobs start at zero to twenty cents and these jobs are located in the kitchen, yard crew and housing porter or tier worker jobs, (landscaping crew). The more skills an inmate possess the better chances are he will receive a good paying job. Because once the lifer population takes all the good jobs the waiting list is usually two years or until someone goes to the hole or transferred to another institution. The best jobs that pay well and have little or no stress are jobs where inmates work around the officers. Because the officers want their job or day to go smoothly and therefore so does the inmate. So the lowest paying job starts at ten dollars a month and the highest is joint venture minimum wage.