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S&WB NEEDS A UNION, NOT PRIVATE CONTRACTORS

by Sanashihla

Sewerage and Water Board (S&WB) workers are right to collectively demand pay increases and safe work conditions. Too often the Mayor of New Orleans and the Executive Director of the S&WB (whose yearly pay recently increased from $265,000 to $295,000) hold press conferences touting “their” great work, but it’s the labor of the workers that really move the city forward.

The workers ought to be the ones administering the city-wide utility service. Their knowledge and expert skills make them the best authority to decide how the city’s resources are best used to meet the needs of the community.

In August, it was revealed that a private contractor named Olameter was hired to increase meter readings. A local reporter exposed that, “the contract calls for Olameter to be paid $37.97 per hour for each of the 20 workers being provided under the contract, with an expenditure cap of $500,000 over three months. S&WB meter readers are paid $13 an hour, though S&WB’s spokesperson, Courtney Barnes, maintains that the utility has been working to get the city’s Civil Service Commission to raise wages.

It’s not the workers who benefit when city contracts are awarded to the friends of city officials. The workers are cheated again when high utility bills cut into their already low wages. The way out of this exploitive situation is not to gripe about how bad things are, but to organize.

The S&WB workers shouldn’t wait on the Civil Service Commission to give raises. Raises can be won through worker solidarity and an organized effort to push workers’ demands. To wage this fight, the workers need an independent union.

“Where there is no union, fight for one. Where there is a union, fight to make it fight!”

It is the legal right of workers to unionize, even in a right to work state. Organized, the workers could decide that instead of hiring 20 temporary workers to be paid at twice the rate of full time workers, all employees would be hired full time on a permanent basis, with living wages and safe work conditions.

The S&WB workers don’t need the Civil Service Commission, nor private contractors, nor high paid overseers to direct and control them. The S&WB would operate so much more efficiently if the workers were in control.

Public support for S&WB workers is present, because this is the same S&WB that is notorious for guesstimating bills and overcharging residents. Support for S&WB workers will only rise when the workers unite in solidarity across departments and job roles and fight for their collective rights! When we fight, we win!

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City Praises Corrupt S&WB Bosses, Workers Pay the Price

In a display of contempt for the workers of New Orleans who have been hit with flooding, explosions, boil water advisories, clogged drainage canals, and bills in the thousands from the Sewerage and Water Board, the city gave a rating of “exceeds expectations” to S&WB executive director Ghassan Korban.

Korban, whose history of outright incompetence and corruption set very low expectations to begin with, got a raise of $30,000 a year, bringing his salary to $295,000. The average New Orleans hospitality worker makes less than $20,000 a year and will get fired for showing up to work late because they couldn’t shower during a boil water advisory. At a recent public meeting, Korban showed no interest in investigating the explosions or other problems that have caused workers so much suffering.

For gross incompetence, preying on the working class, and criminal negligence, the Workers Group gives Korban and the city a rating of “complete failure” and demands that instead of a raise, Korban and the other bosses at the S&WB are jailed for their crimes.

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Jail the Bosses at Sewerage and Water Board

One of two explosions caused by Sewerage and Water Board in December 2019.

By Sally Jane Black

The Sewerage and Water Board has in the past month caused two explosions, one in the French Quarter and one at the Carrollton plant in Uptown, where two workers were injured. They have considered pouring waste into the river. They have been charged with not paying payroll taxes to the IRS, and they continue to send excessive bills to workers in New Orleans. This is on top of the criminal neglect they have subjected the city to for more than a decade, culminating in repeated flooding, billing issues and cut-offs, boil advisories, and—inevitably—more scandals to come. After claiming the drainage basins were clear for years, they found not one, but two entire cars clogging one of the canals.

These failures would be funny if they weren’t hurting workers. But every flood means someone’s home or transportation is destroyed. Every boil advisory means health risks for the elderly, immune-compromised, and children. Polluting the river would mean ecological disaster in a city already overwhelmed by toxic air, soil, and water. The broken billing system leaves workers unable to pay bills and keep the water on. No one can even predict whether their water will be turned off or not. And the fines and fees for the lost payroll taxes will be passed on to the rate-payers. 

The S&WB should serve the people, not the rich. The New Orleans Workers Group demands that the bosses at the Sewerage and Water Board be held accountable and charged for their assault on the workers of New Orleans, and that billing be suspended until a reasonable system is in place. All outstanding debts by working class residents should be canceled. The bosses at the S&WB cannot continue to punish the citizens of New Orleans for their own incompetence and greed.

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Only the Organized Working Class Can Stop Climate Change

By Casey Resto

In early October, the UN issued a special report updating specific aspects of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment of 2014. The results suggest a centuries-long expansion in detrimental economic and environmental effects on humanity. Lower income individuals will be the most severely impacted as we’re the ones least able to afford what insurance companies deem “Acts of God.”

While international agreements require governments to pledge a reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases, only an organization of the workers of the world will have the power to meet the severity of the crisis.

The United States’ decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and recently, to withdraw from the Paris Agreement show that a government will ignore eventual and irreversible consequences for humanity if it’s set up to maintain the rule of the rich over everyone else. We, the majority, will be the ones working in hotter and nastier weather.

Natural disasters have occurred at alarming rates: in 2018 alone, the U.S. was battered by Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael, floods displaced more than a million people in Kerala, India and Typhoon Mangkhut destroyed more than 10,000 homes in the Philippines and China, to name just a few examples.

These catastrophes destroy the environment and its inhabitants, but the effects of these losses are experienced unevenly depending on how a society is organized. Under capitalism, we workers and oppressed take the brunt of the hit. In capitalist society we see incarcerated workers in California fighting deadly wildfires for less than $2 a day. We see North Carolina’s state government refuse to evacuate prisoners in the midst of Hurricane Florence (a category 4 at the time). Over and over we see the cruelty of capitalism.

Low income communities are affected as city boards refuse to update their infrastructure to deal with the worsening effects of climate change. New Orleans residents are still feeling the costs of the August 2017 floods. The Sewerage and Water Board’s failure to do their job caused many damages to homes and cars.

These are not unique cases. As the environment worsens, so do our working conditions, our wages and our ability to afford stable living situations that can withstand the drastic changes to our climate. The destruction of the environment and its irreversible effects are an inevitable consequence of imperialism, materialism, and militarism. Capitalism’s persistent and eager need to consume, colonize and destroy in the name of money will only continue to devastate and ravage the world we live in, all for the pleasure of the bourgeoisie. 

We cannot take a passive approach to climate change. Laws take years to enact, and the 2014 IPCC assessment claims that even if global emissions were to stop within the next 24 hours, damages are already locked in for centuries. Those at the top won’t give up their greed. Our only option is to organize and make revolution.

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Sewerage and Water Board Continues Assault on Orleans Parish Residents

Rate-Payers Have No Voice in Board Decisions

The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board (S&WB) continues to add insult to injury. The latest moves include granting retroactive pay raises of $20,000 – $45,000 to S&WB managers. Protest was so loud, even by the daily ruling-class papers, that the recipients of the raises were forced to resign on August 20. Mayor Cantrell had acting Executive Director Jade Brown Russel demand the resignations. Then on August 21, Russell was forced to resign and was replaced by retired US Coast Guard Rear Admiral David Callahan who will run the S&WB for two weeks until Ghassan Korban, former Milwaukee Public Works Commissioner, arrives in the first week of September.

Meanwhile the S&WB ordered the resumption of water cut-offs on August 13 despite knowing that the billing system has not been fixed. They claim that more than 7000 people are more than a year delinquent and that the S&WB desperately needs money. Yet they have money to grant raises to the big wigs and to hire legal teams to fend off lawsuits stemming from the August 5, 2017 flooding.

Mayor Cantrell is attempting to show concern and decisiveness in dismissing the latest mis-leadership team while taking no responsibility although she is the President of the Sewage and Water Board. This is same way Mayor Landrieu tried to duck responsibility. This is just for show as we know that the root of the problem is the lack of local control of the S&WB. True leadership would admit and denounce the dysfunction and refuse to cut-off anyone’s water until actual meter reading is done and exorbitant bills resolved.

Also on August 21, the S&WB refused to attend a scheduled meeting with the Public Works sub-committee of the City Council where they were to present a progress report. Since the S&WB is an independent state agency there is little the council can do but complain. Facing more public anger, it finally appeared at a Council meeting. The Council had passed a resolution (which has no teeth) against cutting anyone off. The new Board members arrogantly dismissed this demand.

The S&WB must come under popular control of the residents who struggle to pay bills, not the rich who are there to sniff out opportunities for their friends to have an inside track to lucrative S&WB contracts. It must also pay reparations to the victims of the Augusts 5, 2017 floods who suffered damages. This of course will not happen unless we organize and force these changes

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Army Corps of Engineers, S&WB Destroying Florida Ave. 9th Ward Neighborhood

By a Gallier St. Resident

New Orleanians who live in the upper ninth in the Florida neighborhood are seeing our homes destroyed due to the arrogance of the city, Sewerage and Water Board and the Army Corps of Engineers. They are jointly in charge of the Southeast Louisiana (SELA) drainage project which will cost over $300 million on Florida Avenue Canal. It began several years ago and was scheduled to finish this year, but its now extended to 2020 so the cost will rise as well.

Every day 50 giant trucks speed down our streets, shaking our entire homes starting as early as 6:30 am. We have cracked walls and foundations, pipes not aligned and many breaks in water lines to the road caused by these trucks.
One neighbor, A. Collins, said “why was our street designated a main truck route? We were not notified, and it seems no one is willing to help us or inform us what is going on.”

Now they have closed off Louisa street, which is the main road connecting our neighborhood to the Chef Menteur shopping areas, forcing us to go a long distance out of our way. No notice was given that the street would be closed or for how long. Even before it was closed the street from Law to the canal was pitted with craters.

Neighbors who live on Law, Louisa, Gallier and other streets have been complaining for years. We have filed for compensation but are told that will only happen after the project is completed. And it will be subject to inspections by the same agency that is causing the problem!

For six months Gallier St. neighbors demanded a meeting to discuss ways the problems could be solved. After months of stalling, officials finally came to a local meeting and tried to give us a Power-Point on the project. They refused to have a one-on-one discussion with the community. 40 neighbors attended and poured their hearts out about the destruction of our homes, disruption to our lives, destruction of our vehicles and health issues caused by the project.

DUST EVERYWHERE
Every day our homes and vehicles are coated with dust as the streets have crumbled. They have laid down a product that when dry gives off tons of dust whenever a truck comes by. Many residents are experiencing health issues as a result. Gallier street is no longer a real road but more like a dirt road.

COUNCILMAN BROUSSARD IGNORES US TOO – DOES NOTHING
37 emails to Councilman Broussard were ignored. Finally, Broussard wrote to advise us to contact the same agencies we were complaining to him about. He has never come to the area or met with the residents.

Boh Brothers and high-paid consultants and politicians are getting rich off this project. They would never treat the French Quarter or mansion littered St. Charles this way.

WILL WE STILL HAVE HOMES? WHO WILL FIX THEM?
This is proof that working-class residents and especially predominantly Black communities must get organized to militantly challenge the powers that care nothing for us. To protect ourselves, we should put these agencies under the direct control of the people.