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Trenton Voters Say ‘No’ to Private Water
Union and community activists in Trenton, N.J., rallied voters with door-to-door campaigning to beat back the New Jersey American Water Company’s nearly $250,000 advertising and mail blitz to privatize a prized and profitable part of the city’s water system.
In a referendum yesterday, voters rejected, 6,968 to 1,812, a proposal to sell to American Water the city’s municipally owned Trenton Water Works suburban infrastructure—pipes, water towers and tanks. Said Bob Houser of the Utility Workers (UWUA):
Selling off one of the community’s most valuable assets—its public water system—to a profit-driven corporation is a bad deal for Trenton.
Newly elected Trenton Mayor Tony Mack, who opposed the deal, said:
Last year our water works had gross revenues of approximately $42 million. That is an asset. There also is the issue of jobs. If Trenton Water Works is sold, there is no guarantee current employees will retain their positions.
According to NJ.com, New Jersey American Water through its political action committee, Trenton YES, spent some $225,000 on fliers, advertisements, consultants, telephone polls and door-to-door canvassers.
UWUA and SEIU 32 BJ represent some 2,800 workers at New Jersey American Water operations and thousands more at other American Water facilities across the country. The company is demanding huge cuts in working families’ health care and retirement benefits and the workers are in the process of a strike vote.
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This outstanding victory against water privatization is a good new example of the great value of union/community activist coalition campaigns in the public interest. It has obvious applications to other important public campaigns that are being fought – or should be fought – by progressive labor joining together with friends and neighbors against wall street profiteers to powerfully defend the whole community’s right of access to essential and basic resources and services. This coalition solidarity approach to organizing will not only rdirectly aid making concrete gains for all, but will at the same time go far toward building union awareness, knowledge, strength and community pride, inspiring our friends and neighbors more and more to join together with unions in the fight for a better world and a better life for all.