Stop Veolia

SeattleZine Project

2 3Stop Veolia Seattlestopveoliaseattle.wordpress.com

This Zine is a collection of texts and images, a compiling of research and conversations, writings and imagined futures with the defining and redefining of solidarity at its center. It is also a biography—if, as we are told, corporations are people too—of French-based multinational corporation, Veolia.

Stop Veolia Seattle (SVS) is humbled to be stepping into a conversation with a much more established movement targeting Veolia, and a much longer history of resistance to inequality in the form of neoliberal corporatization and older forms of colonialism, imperialism, militarism, apartheid, and occupation. This Zine is one way to write and draw our evolving understanding of how our work in Seattle is part of a larger, longer conversation.

When we began SVS we asked: How can a campaign targeting Veolia help us and others ask larger questions about solidarity organizing and the roots of our current struggles? How does Veolia’s particular history and affiliations help us build or reinforce an understanding, an analysis, that allows us to work across many different communities of resistance in mutually generative ways?

We understand Veolia as a microcosm for tracing the intersections of our struggles locally and globally, for the potential and the need for solidarity and for what that community of joint-struggle might look like. Veolia also provides a case study for mapping other genealogies and continuities. Veolia, a company that can be traced back to Napoleon, helps us to trace the roots of today’s neoliberalism in earlier manifestations of Western imperialism and exploitation.

We hope this Zine reads both as a timeline for the evolution of systems of exploitation and as a non-linear mapping of potential and real solidarities, for articulating and hopefully building historically rooted forms of resistance.

“Solidarity is not an act of charity but an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains towards the same objectives.” –Samora machel

art by maia brown

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What’s inside?A History of Veolia

page 6 imperialism & genealogies of neoliberal privatization, by maia brown

Corporatizationpage 18 despite veolia’s political interference, communities around the world protect human right to water, by katherine sawyerpage 21 the corporate stranglehold over the united nations, by richard gerardpage 27 veolia & transportation: thinking about corporatization & freedom of movement,

by maia brownpage 30 why governments are on the hook to ensure clean, safe water for everyone,

by maude barlow

remunicipipalization page 34 the rising water in bolivia and latin america, by marcela oliverapage 37 turning the tides: new approaches and alternatives, by mary ann manahan

veolia around the worldpage 42 asia-pacific: a primer (5 reasons why you should challenge veolia), by mary ann manahanpage 47 india: veolia favors profits and abuse over right to water, by friends of earth francepage 48 South durban, south africa: activists occupy veolia plant, by sarah khanpage 49 privatization’s human cost: the crisis of bus drivers in santiago, by anson stewartpage 56 boston school bus drivers vs. veolia, by linda averill

detroitpage 60 People’s water board statement on creation of regional water authoritypage 62 detroit’s water: behind the bankruptcy crisis, by khaled a beydounpage 64 moving beyond solidarity, by tawana petty

palestinepage 68 BDS marks another victory as Veolia sells off all Israeli operationspage 70 letter to the united nations, by richard falkpage 72 overview of current activities in europe, by adri nieuwhofpage 74 veolia & it’s history of contract lossespage 77 resistance from within: veolia employee stops cutting off the water,

seattlepage 80 dorian taylor on access and solidarity in our movementspage 84 pressure mounts on executive constantine to take action on veolia, by susan koppelmanpage 89 stop veolia seattle call to king county councilpage 90 transit riders union and bayan-nw solidarity letterspage 92 solid ground, access driver & member of atu local 587 on veoliapage 94 hearing from access users, by lonnie nelsonpage 96 interview with jacqueline sorgenpage 98 mlk county labor council resolution against veoliapage 99 veolia/transdev attempts to divide our coalition

Stop Veolia Seattle is a coalition of groups and community members from the disability justice community, the labor community, Palestine Solidarity, anti-corporatization and environmental movements, among others, who have come together to form a working group to get Veolia out of King County and to bring the Access paratransit service in-house with good labor practices and benefits for workers and respectful, caring, timely, affordable service for folks with disabilities and the elderly. We are urging King County, not to continue their contract with Veolia first and foremost because our community deserves better. We stand rooted in solidarity with Palestinians, global workers and global water and transportation users who are impacted by Veolia’s reckless and criminal practices that violate workers rights and human rights, including the right to water, the right to self-determination and freedom of movement.

Responding to the Palestinian Civil Society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel (BDS), we support the nonviolent methods of BDS until Israel meets its obligation to the Palestinian people and international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

We are lucky to be doing this work in the context of great momentum--there are things to celebrate! BDS affiliated campaigns have ended contracts or prevented contracts with Veolia in the USA, UK, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Iran, & Spain; and water justice advocates have also ended contracts with Veolia around the world including in India and Veolia’s native France.

SVS members understand the struggle for Palestinian equal rights as intimately tied to global struggles for economic, social, and cultural justice, including the struggles of other indigenous peoples around the world and at home, and the structural race and class inequality we face in our local communities.

For us, Veolia is a compelling example of how BDS as a strategy and a lens allows us to map these global intersections—BDS is beginning to give us a new way to think and talk about how Palestine solidarity work is entangled in our social justice struggles locally and with those in the rest of the Global South.

BDS must lead us back to a very old question: If we define Solidarity as acting out of the knowledge that our own liberation is tied up in the liberation of others, and that the oppressed must lead the struggle, how do we practice working together in ways that are reparative and restructure how we share power and resources? How do we build global solidarities that don’t mean ignoring

what happens in our own communities, that don’t sap our energies away from the resistance movements of our neighborhoods, but make us all stronger?

About SVS and Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions

see also p. 99

History and policy analysis is not

everyone’s thing, jump to p. 79 for Seattle

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hundred years. The company grew quickly and in 1861, CGE was awarded a 50-year concession for water distribution in the city of Paris.

Veolia’s beginnings are rooted in Napoleonic history. Just over a year before CGE’s founding Napoleon III had declared himself Emperor of France in a coup d’etat. Unable to serve a second term as president under the new constitution, and unable to gain support for a constitutional amendment, he took power by force, becoming the leader of France’s Second Empire. A year after CGE’s founding, Napoleon III was embroiled in the Crimean War.

With both authoritarian and liberal-reformist tendencies, domestically, Napoleon III is known for his massive public works projects, which define the modern urban-scape of France today. He is also remembered for severe restriction of civil liberties, censorship laws, and

1: Food and Water Watch. “Privatization Threatens St. Louis’ Water: Fact Sheet.” December 2010, http://docu-ments.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/StLouisweb.pdf#_ga=1.198022316.2052297339.13921449392: Encyclopaedia Britanica, Fifteenth Edition, 1991.

harsh repression of opponents.The Second Empire was a time of rapid and

unprecedented economic expansion. Industrial production doubled, foreign trade tripled, railway mileage expanded six-fold. The first large investment banks were founded as well as the first department store. The French merchant marine became the second largest in the world as Napoleon III negotiated the first free trade agreement with England.2

The growth and influence of French capital expanded across borders. Bridges, railways, and

sewage systems were built with French money and engineering throughout continental

Europe. Veolia often sites CGE’s centrality in this era of industrialization and urbanization.

CGE’s founding president, Count Henri Siméon was a political leader of

the Elysée Party that officially approved Napoleon III’s 1851 coup. A year later

the Count presided over the merger that founded the Lyon-Mediterranean Railway Company. In the year of

CGE’s founding, he was also presiding over

a city planning commission writing the new Master Plan for the city of Paris.

French businessmen were becoming

wealthy, founding enterprises, like

CGE, that still exist today. A disproportionate number of these successful entrepreneurs were not only allies of Napoleon III, but former disciples of Saint-Simon. Napoleon himself is said to have had Saint-Simonist leanings.3

The founders of CGE also identified themselves as followers of Saint-Simonianism—the philosophy expanded from the work of Claude-Henry de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon. French social theorist and chief founder of Christian Socialism, Saint-Simon has been described as a “pervasive influence on the intellectual life of 19th Century Europe.”4 Though often understood as an early utopian socialist thinker, one of Marx’s and Engels’ influences, his was not an anti-capitalist vision. In opposition to the exploitation of the feudalism and militarism of his time, “the Saint-Simonian doctrine relied on a benevolent dictatorship of industrialists and scientists to remove inequities.”5

Best known for his work The New Christianity, he came to preach that the aristocracy and the priests should be replaced by the capitalists as the leaders of society—the unproductive elite replaced by those who were the “innovators and organizers of the production process.”6 For Saint-Simon, the productive efficiency of the factory should be extended to the whole of society.

After his death, his vision began gaining momentum. By the second French Revolution of 1830, Saint-Simonianism was a briefly recognized political party with some international supporters. The founders of CGE saw the operation of public services by the private sector as bringing factory efficiency to all aspects of society and ensuring their place as the new capitalist elite.

Today, if you visit the history sections of Veolia’s various webpages, Saint-Simonism features

3: Ibid.4: Ibid.

5: Ibid.6: Ernesto Screpanti and Stefano Zamagni. “Socialist Economic Thought and Marx,” An Outline of the History of Economic Thought, Second Edition. p. 135.

The history of Veolia, under its many names and subsidiaries, takes us back over a century and across continents. From Compagnie Générale des Eaux (CGE) to Vivendi, and later, Veolia, the French-based multinational and its subsidiaries hold contracts on five continents, specializing not only in water and sanitation, but trash, transportation, and energy. Veolia is one of the largest privatizers of public services globally and the world’s largest privatizer of water in particular.1

If, we are told, corporations are people too; this is an unofficial biography of Veolia. It is a history of the evolving ideologies and global powers that facilitated Veolia’s early expansion and a more recent map of its corporate shapeshifting. We begin in France.

ORIGIN STORIES: Veolia & Empire“Our history is entwined with that of towns and cities.”

–Veolia.comFrance, December 14, 1853: Compagnie Générale

des Eaux (CGE)—the General Water Company, the first of Veolia’s many names—was born by imperial decree from Napoleon III. CGE’s first contract was to supply water to the public of Lyons for one

WRITTEN BY maia brown

a history of veoliaimperialism & genealogies of neoliberal privatization

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prominently. The private sector, we are told, fueled ‘the modernization’ of France, and Saint-Simonianism was the ideological underpinning and its adherents the network of business elites responsible for CGE’s and the industrial revolution’s success.7

gROWING, GROWING: Veolia TimelineGrowing in a whirlwind of aggressive mergers

and acquisitions, CGE has parented three of the world’s most powerful corporations in their fields: Veolia Environnement, which includes Veolia’s water and sanitation services; VINCI, the largest construction company in the world by revenue; and French international media conglomerate, Vivendi. Mismanagement scandals and attempts at rebranding have characterized its more recent history.

This narrative of the uninterrupted success of the private sector and the inability of state-operated

utilities to carry the load of French modernity is distorted at best. Interestingly, by the late 19th century, French municipalities refused to renew utilities contracts with private corporations like CGE because of their high tariffs and failure to expand networks to poor neighborhoods. Privatized water declined to 17% in 1936. It only started to increase again in the mid-1950s reaching 32% and 50% in 1975. With the rise of neoliberal policy and the new model of privatization branded “public-private partnerships,” in 2000 it rose to 80%. Under this new system, instead of a corporation taking full responsibility for service delivery and financial investment, companies are only responsible for operation and maintenance, while major investments are the responsibility of the municipality. Though the water supply of Paris was reprivatized in 1985 under a conservative mayor, the trend is starting to unravel again. In 2009-10, a socialist mayor remunicipalized the water system of the French capital.

7: Aymeric Blank and Sarah Botton. “Water Services and the Private Sector in Developing Countries: Comparative Perceptions and Discussion Dynamics.” AFD Research Department. 2010, http://www.afd.fr/webdav/shared/PUBLICATIONS/RECHERCHE/Scientifiques/Recherches/02-Recherches-VA.pdfLaetitia Guerin-Schneider and Dominique Lorrain. “The relationships public authorities-private companies in the water and draining sector,” 2003, http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15175987

The Colonies: Saint-Simonian fervor for private industry was developing in the context of a growing colonial empire that came to include not only colonies in the West Indies and South America, but Algeria, and under Napoleon III, parts of modern-day Vietnam and Cambodia. Napoleon III doubled the area of French colonial holdings with a patchwork of colonies, protectorates, and military bases. By 1900, France would be the world’s second-largest colonial empire.

Some of the largest business ventures in France were not surprisingly companies profiting from ventures both at home and in the colonies. CGE had connections to ‘multinational’ enterprise from the beginning. The Lyon-Mediterranean Railway held contracts for railway operation in the South-East of France as well as Algeria. Like the railroads, a potent symbol of colonization for many in the Global South, Napoleon was consolidating and expanding water and sanitation infrastructure. Sewage treatment and filtered water systems were understood, at the time, to be the same kind of profitable new market as the railways.

One of the first private companies to operate municipal water systems in France, it did not take long for CGE to cross the border. In 1880 CGE was awarded its first international contract, in Venice. In the next two years, imperial trade routes take them to Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1882 and Porto in 1883. CGE’s reach stretches further and further afield into the lives of the colonized.

Roots of a New Era: In the case of Veolia, we see the imperial and colonial roots of current multinational corporations and global privatization. The first free trade agreements were signed and ‘multinational corporations’ formed far before Reagan and Thatcher-style neoliberalism. In some basic ways, neoliberalism shares a Saint-Simonian aesthetic of technological progress, the primacy of production and efficiency, and the notion of entrepreneurial industrialists as the true benefactors of society. Saint-Simon’s vision was to replace the unproductive and war-mongering nobility with the capitalists. He believed this shift would ensure a more humane social structure that would facilitate the uplift of the poor. It was a vision of a new social hierarchy, but a hierarchy nonetheless, and one that is familiar today in its violent warehousing of the poor, rather than the path to social justice that Saint-Simon may have envisioned.

8: Global Exchange. “Veolia’s Other Offenses.” http://www.globalexchange.org/economicactivism/veolia/otheroffenses9: Veolia.com. “Veolia Celebrates 160 Years.” http://www.veolia.com/en/group/history

For over a century, CGE remained largely focused on water. In 1953, in its centennial year, CGE was selling water to 8 million people in France, almost 19% of the population. The appointment of Guy Dejouany as CEO in 1976 marked a shift for CGE. A massive series of takeovers in 1980 extended its reach into the fields of waste management, energy, transportation, construction, and property. CGE’s shift began with a massive merger of a number of subsidiaries into Omnium de Traitement et de Valorisation (OTV). The new subsidiary specialized in the design, engineering and manufacture of water and wastewater treatment equipment. CGE then began acquiring controlling interests in a number of transit-related companies including the Compagnie Générale d’Entreprises Automobiles (CGEA), that specialized in industrial vehicles, and Compagnie Générale Française de Tramways (CGET), later dividing into two branches: Connex and Onyx. CGE expanded into energy services, acquiring both the Compagnie Générale de Chauffe, and the Montenay group, later renamed Dalkia. These three subsidiaries would later comprise Veolia Environnement.

In 1983, CGE supported the founding of Canal+, the first Pay-TV channel in France. Throughout the 1990s, CGE expanded into telecommunications and mass media, culminating in the 2000 merger that produced Vivendi Universal and

Vivendi Environnement.

This was a period of rapid expansion as well as scandal and mismanagement, under the leadership of Henri Proglio. Most notably in 1996, over one third of the directors of Vivendi Universal’s main board were under investigation for corruption. CGE scrambled to jettison its debt load with the reduction of Vivendi Universal’s credit rating to ‘junk’ status and the forced resignation of CEO, Jean-Marie Messier. Messier was later convicted and fined in France for fraud as well as by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, and denied a $25 million severance package.8

In 1998, CGE changed its name to Vivendi. In 1999, Vivendi Environnement was founded to consolidate Vivendi Water (Water), Onyx (Waste Management), Dalkia (Energy) and Connex (Transportation). In 2002, Vivendi Universal sold off a majority stake of Vivendi Environnement and renamed it Veolia Environnement in 2003. Finally, in 2005 the company’s four divisions, water, environmental services, energy, and transportation, adopt a

single name: Veolia.9

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN VEOLIA COMES TO TOWN?

Veolia says:“We are highly motivated to build and sustain positive working relationships with organized labor.”“We deliver bus and rail service at lower cost, and at quality levels that are comparable and often better than publicly operated transit service.”“An increasing number of transit agencies have realized that they are unable to maintain service levels with decreased funding for their transit systems, and contracting with the private sector for all or part of the service can be an alternative to layoffs and service cuts.”13

Especially in the context of economic recession and state austerity measures, this is a very appealing pitch. But as highlighted in recent reports coming out of North America, Veolia’s prioritization of private profit is clearly at odds with the environment and public welfare.14

According to Food and Water Watch and others, Veolia often underbids its competitors for the operation

of municipal utilities and transportation systems, but the promised cost reduction translates to an increase in service fees while the service itself shrinks. Route cuts on bus lines and failure to deliver quality access to water in poor and rural areas is common. Infrastructure is often neglected, maintenance deferred and substandard equipment used. More often than not, unions are quickly busted and working conditions become untenable. High staffing turn over and failure to attract experienced staff is common with conditions of impossible scheduling and minimal breaks, low salaries, and inevitably the dissolution of benefits and pension plans. In addition, the fine print of Veolia contracts often skirts full responsibility in liability provisions.

In the words of the international human rights organization, Global Exchange, “Worldwide, consumers report that Veolia consistently charges high rates, provides poor service, and fails to make promised improvements.”15

make it fancy - circle around, fix font yeah

With a new name and logo, Veolia maintains hundreds of subsidiaries in dozens of countries under Veolia Water, Veolia Environmental Services, Veolia Energy, Veolia Transport, and sometimes under other names: Transdev, US Filter, Apa Nova, United Water, PVK, Onyx

Environmental, Dalkia, Connex, to name a few.

13: Transdev North America. “Why Contract with Transdev North America: The Leader in Public-Private Contracting in Transit.” http://www.transdevna.com/Company/Contract-Options/Why-Transdev.aspx14: Food & Water Watch. “Money Down the Drain: How Private Control of Water Wastes Public Resources,” 2009, http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/money-down-the-drain/Food & Water Watch. “A Closer Look: Veolia Environnement,” 2010, http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/veolia.pdfFood & Water Watch. “Veolia Environnement: A Profile of the World’s Largest Water Service Corporation,” 2011, http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/veolia-environnement-a-profile/ Novato Friends of Locally Operated Wastewater. “Veolia and the Environment: A Bad Fit for Novato.” http://freepdfs.net/veolia-and-the- environment-a-bad-fit-for-novato-green-party-of/1eb2bff3a6f63a89ff50ad446c8cf5d0/Public Citizen. “Veolia Environment: A Corporate Profile” 2005, http://www.citizen.org/documents/Vivendi-USFilter.pdf15: Global Exchange. “Veolia’s Other Offenses.” http://www.globalexchange.org/economicactivism/veolia/otheroffenses

10: Veolia’s debt problems were highlighted in 2012 when its credit rating was downgraded by Moody’s Investors Services: “Moody’s Inves-tors Service has today downgraded to Baa1 from A3 the senior unsecured ratings of Veolia Environnement SA.” 7 Feb 2012, https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Veolias-rating-to-Baa1-stable-outlook--PR_23710411: Until February 2015, Veolia Group was Veolia Environnement.12: Patel, Tara. “Transdev to Sell European Assets, Cut Debt as Part of Overhaul.” Bloomberg. 26 Mar 2013, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-03-26/transdev-to-sell-european-assets-cut-debt-as-part-of-overhaulBloomberg. “Company Overview.” http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=1222575

The last five years has seen Veolia assuring its shareholders that it will be getting out of the transportation sector entirely as it battles debt.10 In 2011 Veolia Environnment completed a deal with French state-owned bank, Caisse des Dépôts, merging their respective French-owned transportation subsidiaries to create a new French transnational transportation company that is jointly owned by the two. The new company is presently called Transdev and is 50% owned by Veolia11 and 50% owned by Caisse des Depots. In 2011, Veolia Transport ceased to exist in France, but the US subsidiary Veolia Transportation Services Inc continued to operate in the US until July 2014, when the US subsidiary changed its name to Transdev Services Inc. This name change reflects a definite change in ownership, as Veolia Transportation Services Inc was wholly owned by Veolia Environnment, while Transdev Services Inc is wholly owned by Transdev, which is only 50% owned by Veolia.12

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QUESTIONS OF THE FUTURE“Founded at the dawn of the industrial era and the start of urban development, Veolia Environnement has continually adapted to political, social and cultural changes over the past 160 years. Now our goal is to stay a step ahead, by finding answers to the questions of the future.” –Veolia.com

In their “2012 Annual and Sustainability Report,” Veolia’s current CEO, Antoine Frérot introduced Veolia’s vision of the future. Geographically, Veolia proposes to refocus “on the most dynamic economies to benefit from their rapid growth”;

the list includes central and eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Veolia is also aiming to expand into “new markets” including shale gas extraction and the dismantling of nuclear facilities.16 Most recently, Veolia has been awarded the contract for the disposal of Syrian chemical weapons.17 Given Veolia’s track record of mismanagement with harmful environmental and human consequences, as well as its current entrenchment in Israeli occupation in the region, this is a troubling new role for Veolia.

Veolia’s most recent report, published in May of 2014, reiterated a focus on Water, Waste, and Energy—with no mention of Transportation—and boasted 202,800 employees around the world. The report highlights projects such as a wastewater treatment plant in Denmark, waste management contracts in Australia and the UK, and major water contracts in Japan and Ecuador (through a new subsidiary, Proactiva, operating in eight South American countries). Veolia has also been awarded contracts for a water treatment plant for Shell’s Carmon Creek heavy-oil project under construction in Alberta, Canada and the design of a desalination plant for a Saudi petrochemical complex. The Iraqi Ministry for Municipalities and Public Works has signed a $115 million contract with Veolia to build a desalination plant in southern Iraq.18

But there is resistance. Even in France, communities are taking back their water systems. In 2009, after a 25-year contract, the city of Paris decided not to renew its contract with Veolia. Paris has saved money and stabilized the price of water. In the rest of Europe, including Belgium, Germany, Romania, and around the globe, municipalities have broken contracts with Veolia and restored

in 2010, all cac 40 companies (except unibail rodamco) had at least one director in common.

public control of their water.19 To date, there have been over

50 successful campaigns targeting Veolia, spanning four continents. As a result, Veolia has lost or failed to secure contracts totaling $23.97 billion.20 And there is resistance from within. In 2013 a Veolia Water employee in Avignon lost his job for refusing to cut the water off for families who could no longer pay. In an interview with Europe1 Radio, Marc (only his first name has been made public), a customer service engineer with Veolia for twenty years, said, “It could happen to anyone. You have to make a choice - either feed the children or pay the bills. These big companies pocket the money and redistribute it to their shareholders, without looking after their clients or employees. It’s scandalous.”21

Veolia is just one window to understand the need for joint-struggle, how corporatization entangles us with past histories of oppression and present global resistances. When we understand the historical continuities, exemplified by Veolia, between early structures of Western Imperialism and industrialization and today’s globalization and neoliberalism, we strengthen our ability to build new solidarities and communities of struggle.

16: Veolia Environnement. “2012 Annual and Sustainability Report.” http://www.veoliawaterst.com/sites/g/files/dvc471/f/assets/documents/2015/01/3226416023Veolia-annual-report-2012.pdf17: “Under the British government’s support for the international mission led by the United Nations to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons, Veolia was chosen to

destroy 150 metric tons of hazardous materials. The batches of “Class B precursor” chemicals were treated at Veolia’s Ellesmere Port high temperature incinerator (HTi) in the United Kingdom, near Liverpool, under the existing hazardous waste treatment contract between Veolia and the Disposal Services Authority, a part of the UK Ministry of Defense.” (Veolia’s “2013 Annual and Sustainability Report,” page 43)Ironically, a company in breach of international law in its operations on occupied Palestinian land has been awarded a contract to a UN body. Right now Israel has a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region. After Syria’s chemical weapons are destroyed, Israel will have a near monopoly over chemical weapons as well.

18: Veolia. “2013 Annual and Sustainability Report.” http://www.veolia.com/sites/g/files/dvc181/f/assets/documents/2014/05/radd_veo-lia_2013_gb.pdf19: Global Exchange. “Veolia’s Other Offenses.” http://www.globalexchange.org/economicactivism/veolia/otheroffenses20: Global Exchange. “Veolia Campaign Victories.” http://www.globalexchange.org/economicactivism/veolia/victories21: McPartland, Ben. “Fired for Refusing to Cut Off Poor Families’ Water.” The Local: France’s News in English, http://www.thelocal.fr/20130419/sacked-for-refusing-to-cut-off-poor-families-water

photo via corporate boards in european law: a comparative analysis

The CAC 40 is a benchmark French

stock market index

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The global water crisis continues to have a staggering impact on human life, leaving one in four people without enough safe water to drink. Yet the global water industry is swooping in with so-called solutions that have only made the situation worse. Veolia—one of the world’s largest water transnationals is leading the way. The water giant is interfering politically to gain control of public water systems around the globe to turn a profit at the expense of both people’s access to their most essential resource and the long-term sustainability of public water infrastructure. In fact, Veolia’s very business model depends upon the commodification of our most basic human right.

But communities around the globe that have experienced first-hand the rate hikes, health and safety violations, and mass worker layoffs that characterize Veolia’s poor track record are taking a stand. Since 2002, at least 32 U.S. municipalities have taken back control of their water systems, many from Veolia, and international communities from Indonesia to

Greece are also making sure their water stays in public

communities around the world protect human right to water

hands. And these public utilities, with their mandate to provide the public with safe and clean water, are proving they can do a better job than privateers like Veolia, which have a fundamentally different mandate: to increase corporate profit.

Take Paris, for instance, notably the international headquarters of Veolia and another leading transnational water privatizer, Suez. For decades Parisians watched Suez and Veolia pad their bottom lines with profits that were supposed to go toward improving the city’s water infrastructure. But in 2008 the city remunicipalized its water supply, saving tens of millions of dollars and lowering water rates by 8 percent. So it’s no surprise to hear Veolia CEO Antoine Frerot express his concern for Veolia’s private water business. In a recent Reuters article, Frerot said, “The Paris remunicipalization decision has done a lot of damage to our profession. Whenever I visited a prospect around the world [. . .] they would ask me why they would do business with me if even the French capital has no confidence in the French water firms.”

Veolia’s Trojan Horse ContractsAs Veolia’s global reputation

has taken a hit, the water giant has launched a new “Trojan horse” consulting strategy to boost profits and get its foot in the door of resistant communities. These “Peer Performance Solution” contracts begin with the corporation consulting on efficiency measures and open the door to Veolia’s increased involvement in the operation and management of community water systems. Currently, Veolia holds these contracts in major cities including DC, NYC, Pittsburgh, and LA.

Veolia claims these new contracts will help cities be more “efficient” in water delivery, but experience has shown that the type of efficiency the private water industry is concerned with is efficient generation of corporate profits. What’s more, Veolia’s so-called efficiency often comes at the expense of public health, worker rights, and responsible stewardship of the long-term infrastructure so essential to effective public water delivery systems. Under a decade-long Veolia contract in Gladewater, Texas, for instance, residents experienced

despite veolia’s political interferenceWRITTEN BY katherine sawyer, national water campaign organizer, corporate accountability international

numerous water quality problems, as well as broken water meters that cost the city tens of thousands of dollars. As a result of poor water quality, some residents reportedly had to spend money on buying bottled water before the city remunicipalized in 2012. In Brussels, a subsidiary of Veolia called Aquiris deliberately stopped treating wastewater released into the river during contract negotiations in 2009—putting pressure on the local government and demonstrating the willingness of the corporation to put profits before environmental and public health.

St. Louis Thwarts Veolia’s Political Manipulation

Despite Veolia’s attempts to sneak Trojan horse contracts through backdoor channels, communities in the United States—like those around the world—are exposing and halting this political interference. Last year in St. Louis, for instance, Corporate Accountability International worked closely with the Dump Veolia coalition, a close-knit group of human rights, environmental,

and labor groups concerned about Veolia’s record and business practices, to challenge a proposed water contract.

Veolia’s attempts to gain managerial control of the city’s water system ran the gamut from wielding its financial power to exploiting its political connections. Not only did the water giant hire a lawyer who doubles as a lobbyist for a political action committee that has donated generously to Mayor Slay’s election campaign, but in 2010, Veolia also began making presentations to St. Louis Water Division and touring the water facilities.

But concerned citizens caught wind of these and other egregious dealings, and brought this

political interference to light. After community members brought considerable public pressure to bear, the city initiated public hearings on the contract. And although Veolia continued to send glossy promotional materials to public officials and coordinated a damage-control campaign with

art by maia brown

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the mayor’s office, the peoples’ will prevailed. With a coordinated campaign of calls, media exposure, and public protest, the Dump Veolia coalition moved the Board of Aldermen to action. Key Aldermen declared their intention to introduce a resolution to remove funding for the Veolia contract. After months of public outcry and negative media coverage, Veolia was forced to back out of St. Louis.

As St. Louis Board of Aldermen President Reed explains, “In St. Louis, public opinion on the proposed Veolia contract was loud and clear. I stood against it because I believed the contract would have given Veolia a foothold to push through future contracts, deepening its power over and ability to profit from our water system. Veolia’s tactic is to work out sweetheart deals with influential players in cities like ours, but Veolia doesn’t have the whole city in its back pocket. Our experience shows that vigilance and strong public commitment can prevent private water from circumventing democracy.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION Read Corporate Accountability International’s white paper: Troubled Waters: Misleading Industry PR and the Case for Public Water

Local Legislation Protects Public WaterIn other communities both in the U.S. and

around the world, local activism has secured public water control for the long run via local legislation. In 2011, residents in Gloucester, Massachusetts passed a local ordinance approved by the state legislature requiring a community referendum before the city can lease or sell its water system. And, in March of this year, the regional government in Lazio, Italy passed a law declaring water a common good to be managed on a not-for-profit basis, with citizen participation in decision-making.

In order to hold local governments accountable and enact these measures, citizens must understand and educate others on the dangers of contracting with Veolia and global water privatizers. As the case of St. Louis illustrates, people mobilize once they learn how the private water industry tries to manipulate policy-making and bypass the democratic process for their own corporate profit. By building coalitions of community members and organizations to focus public attention on backroom dealings and misinformation campaigns through public demonstration and the media, citizens can hold their governments accountable and ensure democratically controlled water systems for the future.

At the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul, the global water justice movement along with progressive parliamentarians from over a dozen countries succeeded in derailing the Forum’s ministerial process. In this vein, close to a dozen countries (including Benin, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay and Venezuela) signed onto a statement calling on states to develop a global water forum based on the principles of democracy, full participation, equity, transparency and social inclusion within the framework of the United Nations. A larger number of countries also signed a statement calling for water to be recognized as a human right within the United Nations Charter.

These actions echoed calls from many water justice activists throughout the week and in the ensuing months to have the United Nations (UN) convene the next World Water Forum. This

strategy of calling for a new, more democratic, and representative home for a global water forum gained exposure in numerous media reports during and after the forum. It also successfully highlighted both the lack of transparency at the triennial meetings and the problems with the forum’s pro business themes and workshops.

Forum organizers, the World Water Council (WWC)1, were forced to make defensive statements to the media countering that a UN organized world water forum would not be inclusive.2 Apparently, the WWC was fearful that if the United Nations organized a global water forum with help from the global water justice movement, their ability to set the agenda as well as forge business deals and partnerships would be limited under a more inclusive and accountable structure.

However, the WWC need not

worry about private interests losing the ability to set agendas and control outcomes inside a UN event. Indeed, the World Water Council, its members and other corporations that make profit from buying and selling water already have a strong presence inside the United Nations. And, perhaps not surprisingly, the inverse is also a reality. With 5 UN agencies listed as members of the WWC, the United Nations has a strong presence inside the WWC. Moreover, the Director of the Division of Water and Secretary of the International Hydrological Programme of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), András Szöllösy-Nagy, has held a seat on the WWC’s 2006 – 2009 Board of Governors.3

To be sure, the relationships between UN agencies and the WWC are but one of many links connecting big business and the United Nations system. The UN

1: Please see full report for more information on the World Water Council. URL: bit.ly/1bd0o882: “Activists Slam Water Forum”, Agence France Presse, March 21, 2009.3: Elections for the new WWC Board of Governors will take place at the WWC’s 5th General Assembly in October 2009.

how big business already wields significant power over the un water agendathe corporate stanglehold over the united nations

an abridged version of an oct. 2009 report by richard gerard, polaris institute

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has ventured a long way down the road of business partnerships and private financing to the point where cooperating with business and using corporate funding has become a fundamental cornerstone of the entire institution.

If a global water forum were to take place under the umbrella of the United Nations today, it would have to be done in such a way as to overcome the corporate stranglehold that already exists in the UN, including the for profit water services companies, the food and beverage industry, plus numerous other large water using multinational corporations and their business associations. At the very least the global water justice movement needs

to develop a counter-strategy to effectively checkmate this corporate influence in the UN if it is going to pursue the goal of making the UN the appropriate home of the world water forum.

Where does the corporate influence come from?

There is no easy way of assessing the full extent of the corporate infiltration of the United Nations given the diverse makeup of the UN system and the various roles played by businesses throughout. A 2006 report from the United Nations

Research Institute for Social Development (UNSRID) found that agencies such as UNICEF, the UNDP, the UNEP, and the World Health Organization are actively engaged – and deeply

aligned – with the private sector in thousands of different partnerships and initiatives.4 A cursory overview of the relationship between business

and the UN over the past few years paints a picture of the private sector permeating every level of the United Nations through various avenues including public private partnerships, special

advisers, and projects financed by corporations, among others.

Relations between the United Nations and big business have changed significantly over the

past two decades mirroring the shift towards neo-liberal economic policies adopted by most Western governments and international financial institutions. Through the 1970’s

and into the early 80’s, the UN was in fact mandated to regulate and monitor the activities of transnational corp orat i o n s (TNCs) who

were perceived to be unduly pressuring states in the Global South and responsible for certain aspects of underdevelopment.5

This work was done through

the now defunct United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC).

UN policies towards TNCs began to shift in the 1980s from regulating impacts on developing countries to facilitating the access of developing countries to FDI through agencies like the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, the UNCTC’s successor organization).6 In the late nineties, a new era of corporate infiltration began when UN agencies started developing partnerships with multinational corporations and seeking project funding from corporate philanthropists.7 This trend was set in motion with the $1 billion donation from media magnet Ted Turner in 1997, made possible

4: Utting, P., Zammit, A., “Beyond Pragmatism: Appraising UN-Business Partnerships”, UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Markets, Business and Regulation Programme Paper Number 1, October, 2006.5: Utting, Peter, “UN-Business Partnerships: Whose Agenda Counts,” UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), December, 2000.6: ibid.7: ibid.

“In the late nineties, a new era of corporate infiltration began when UN agencies started developing partnerships with multinational corporations and seeking project funding from corporate philanthropists. This trend was set in motion with the $1 billion donation from media magnet Ted Turner in 1997, made possible through the creation of the UN Foundation.”

ted turner, media magnate and founder of cnn, created the un foundation.

source: cnn.com

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through the creation of the UN Foundation. A year later, the United Nations Global Compact, a non-binding voluntary corporate initiative, was established where member companies were encouraged to learn from other members’ best practices.

Turner’s donation represented a shift towards private sector financing of UN projects, while the founding of the Global Compact reflected the rise of voluntary initiatives in place of state regulation as the favoured way of persuading multi-national corporations to act responsibly. The result has been in some cases positive, but the Global Compact and its associated programs also gives

corporations the opportunity to wrap themselves in the blue flag of the United Nations without taking solid action to support UN rights based mandates. Indeed, corporations reap more benefit from these close relationships than the United Nations and its member states.

The infiltration of the UN by corporations was part of a broader shift to the prevailing neoliberal model of less government regulation and more private sector involvement in policy making. This change was recently summarized by Executive Director of the Global Compact Georg Kell in a speech to Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst Conference.

As recently as the late 1990s, indifference and mutual suspicion characterized the relationship between the UN and business…this began to change with the launch of the Global Compact…when the UN started to reach out to business…The idea was that by embedding global markets in shared values, by offering opportunities for collective action through learning, dialogue and partnerships, greater sustainability for markets could be achieved while ensuring that the benefits of economic efficiency spread faster and wider.8

Voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects therefore emerged as the dominant model for regulating

corporate behaviour by national governments and inside the United Nations resulting in the kind of relationship the UN has with the private sector today.

The UN has clearly bought into the CSR mantra that the goals and actions of corporations contribute to social and environmental justice and the broader objectives of the United Nations. The major flaw in this model is that when a decision needs to be made between ensuring increased profits and protecting human or environmental rights, corporations are ultimately beholden to their shareholders. The dominant capitalist model does not allow future returns on investment to be compromised.

Therefore, voluntary programs like the Global Compact, which is part of the broader CSR movement, cannot protect people or the environment from the profit motive.Can there be water justice through the UN?

In a climate of increased corporate power the United Nations obviously cannot ignore multinational corporations and their influence on public policy. However, by moving away from a mandate of regulating the power and influence of corporations to becoming a major promoter of public private partnerships and a welcome un-critical place for TNCs, the United Nations has

embarked on a troubling and dangerous path.

The time has come for the global water justice movement to re-think its strategy regarding the world water forum and its demand that it be relocated somewhere inside the United Nations system. If the movement continues to pursue the strategy of bringing the world water forum under the auspices of the UN, then it is imperative that a parallel campaign strategy be mounted, not only to checkmate the considerable influence wielded by the water corporations themselves in the UN, but also the corporate power that has penetrated most of its agencies.

At the very least, these issues

8: Speech by Georg Kell, addressing the Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst Conference, “UN Global Compact Executive Director Addresses Private Equity Community,” September 17. http://www.csrwire.com/press/press_release/27662-UNGlobal-Compact-Executive-Director-Addresses-Private-Equity-Community

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need to be discussed and debated within the water justice movement now before it is too late and we find out that we have walked into a blackhole.

Veolia• Véolia is a member of the Global Compact• Véolia’s influences the United Nations through its membership in organizations like the World Water Council (WWC) and Aquafed. Véolia subsidiaries, Société des Eaux de Marseille (JV with Suez), Société des Eaux d’Arles (JV with Suez) and Proactiva Medio Ambiente (JV with FCC) are also members of the WWC.• In 2002, Véolia Environment provided the impetus for an initiative called Access to Basic Services for All, which seeks to develop an international standards framework on how to build public-private partnerships for utilities. According to a UN Global Compact document, Véolia approached the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) about the possibility of becoming involved in a project promoting P3s for local public services provision. UN-Habitat and UNITAR worked together with private companies, local and national Governments and NGOs, to produce draft guidelines on access to basic services.9 UN-Habitat and UNITAR have also begun to work with Véolia Environment to develop guidebooks targeted at elected and appointed policymakers, in response to the need to build capacity to implement guidelines.• Véolia partners with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) through its disaster response segment Véoliaforce. Volunteers from the company

are mobilized in the event of a humanitarian crisis and offer UNICEF their expertise in supplying water and energy to affected communities. While helpful in times of emergencies such arrangements form the basis for broader collaboration or business opportunities for the company.• Véolia executives had a heavy presence at the 2008 UN Habitat World Urban Forum in Nanjing, China, where the company’s senior executive for partnerships, Cedric Baecher, representing the private sector gave the final remarks at the closing session of the forum.10 The report of the fourth session of the World Urban Forum emphasized that Governments and local authorities should create an enabling governance and regulatory environment to facilitate private sector investments.• In October 2002, both Véolia’s predecessor Vivendi and Suez sponsored a United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conference on the legal framework for water. The conference resulted in a report bearing the logos of UNESCO, the Academie de l’Eau and the logos of the two companies. In another link to UNESCO, Vivendi’s representative at the 3rd World Water Forum in Kyoto was introduced as representing the company as well as UNESCO.

9: Witte, J.M., Reinicke, W., “Business UNusual: Facilitating United Nations Reform Through Partnerships,” commissioned by the United Nations Global Compact Office, produced by the Global Public Policy Institute, 2005.10: World Urban Forum 4, Closing Session, Closing Remarks, November 6, 2008, http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/6076_32858_WUF4_Closing_Private_Sector.pdf

Read the full report for more information on the following dens of corporate influence on water issues inside the UN: Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate, the World Water Council, and Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation.

Austerity MercenariesThe hardest hit by economic recession are often those who rely most heavily on public transportation. As a political culture of economic austerity and neoliberalism meet to starve or dismantle social services, public transit is on the chopping block in North America and globally. Veolia Transportation (now Transdev) is the largest privatizer of public transportation in North America.1 Veolia claims to be committed to balancing the current urgencies of climate change, economic recession, and the rights of organized labor. Their website boasts: “an increasing number of transit agencies have realized that they are unable to maintain service levels with decreased funding for their transit systems, and contracting with the private sector for all or part of the service can be an alternative to layoffs and service cuts.”2 But

THINKING ABOUT CORPORATIZATION & FREEDOM OF MOVEMENTwhat do “alternative[s] to layoffs and service cuts” look like under corporations like Veolia?3

As municipalities reduce or do away with transportation subsidies, transit agencies must rely on employee pay reductions and fare hikes for riders. When political hurdles make these austerity measures difficult, private operators like Veolia are often brought in to slash wages and benefits on the behalf of local governments. In return these private operators expect a profit. Riders’ everyday movements become a source of profit for private, foreign investors. When these investors seek to maximize their profits by exerting greater control over peoples’ mobility, what consequences should concern us?4

What is at stake in many communities is freedom of movement.5 Increasingly the ability to travel easily within and between cities and towns is

restricted to those who can afford their own vehicles. As cuts arrive, one must ask which routes are being cut; often the transit that allows the privileged to commute from the suburbs to downtown office jobs remain untouched. In Seattle, we have seen the end of the Ride-Free-Zone between downtown stops, a lifeline for low-income and homeless riders, and threats of route cuts.6

In his article, “Sweatshops on Wheels,” Chris Hedges outlines this trend in the United States, “This process of destroying our public transportation system is largely complete. Our bus and rail system, compared to Europe’s or Japan’s, is a joke. But an even more insidious process has begun. Multinational corporations, many of them foreign, are slowly consolidating transportation systems into a few private hands.”7 Veolia is one of the leaders in this trend claiming publicly to be “the

VEOLIA & TRANSPORTATIONWRITTEN BY MAIA BROWN

1: See “A History of Veolia” for more on Veolia Transportation transition to Transdev.2: “Why Contract with Transdev North America: The Leader in Public-Private Contracting in Transit.” http://www.transdevna.com/Company/Contract-Options/Why-Transdev.aspx3: Veolia’s claims of cost reduction, underbidding other contractors, rarely materialize, often raising costs to municipalities instead. See Susan Koppelman for more information on the $7 million budget increase in their King County Contract.4: Conversation with Anson Stewart.5: Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates, “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.” Though the ability of the United Nations to enforce international law is notoriously limited and even this clause does not go far enough for most of us, leaving out the injustice of borders and their problematic history, this still provides us a rights-based language to talk about the importance of accessible public transport. 6: Led by the Transit Riders Union, Seattleites continue to battle to prevent further route cuts to King County Metro and for the implementation of a low-income bus fare. 7: Hedges, Chris. “Sweatshops on Wheels.” Truthdig.com, Apr 15, 2013. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/sweat-shops_on_wheels_20130415/

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largest private sector operator of multiple modes of transit in North America,” holding 200 service contracts and employing 18,000 workers in the United States and Canada.8 Public Transit covered in these contracts include, bus, rail, paratransit, bus rapid transit, school buses, taxi and shuttle services. Veolia’s customers include transit agencies, city and county governments, municipalities, airports, private corporations and universities. A partial list of Veolia’s North American contracts include the operation of bus and paratransit services in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Montreal, Nassau County (Long Island, NY), Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, and Washington, DC.

The corporate consolidation of transportation contracts is an aggressive and cynical one. In what Naomi Klein terms “disaster capitalism,” it was Veolia that took over the New Orleans bus system after Hurricane Katrina, immediately stripping workers of their pensions.9 In New York, Veolia hired former Senator Al D’Amato as its lobbyist in order to take over Nassau County’s bus service from the Metropolitan

Transportation Authority (MTA). Months after taking over the contract, Hurricane Sandy became a convenient pretext for the implementation of planned service cuts that disproportionately affected poor riders.10

The mercenary role of corporate transit operators further insulates governments from political accountability for urban inequality and its intersections with structural racism. The discriminatory provision (and defunding) of transit services deepens under corporatization to keep up with the demand for better profit margins.11 Multinationals become the proxy force for the structuring and control of public mobility—the demographic (re)mapping of urban space by virtue of a weakened and unequal public transportation system maintained for a profit.

Warehousing & PacificationWhat, then, are the consequences of the corporatization of the business of controlling and limiting freedom of movement? Describing Palestinians under Israeli Apartheid, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) founder, Jeff

Halper, calls this the “warehousing” of “surplus people.”12

Palestinians, Halper describes, are warehoused by the State of Israel not only in detention facilities, but by literal barriers like checkpoints, separation walls and fences, as well as bureaucratic restrictions on building permits and identification regimes that prohibit or severely limit movement between areas.13 Of course, Veolia is part of this infrastructure of separation and restriction, operating segregated transportation that impedes Palestinian movement and illegally annexes their land.14 In the logic of occupation and Apartheid, Palestinians are unwanted residents on sought-after real estate, so too, the urban poor around the world: residents of informal settlements, slums, shack dwellers, or the ‘South side’ of most major cities in the U.S.

Jimmy Johnson, researcher and analyst of the security and arms industry, urges us to understand that these strategies for maintaining systems of inequality are not isolated, they cross borders, and that the trade in these “tools” is a profitable one. With the highest

8: www.transdevna.com9: Klein, Naomi. Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.10: Kabak, Benjamin. “NICE BUS, $7.3 million in the red, already threatening service cuts.” http://secondavenuesagas.com/2012/02/16/nice-

bus-7-3-million-in-the-red-already-threatening-service-cuts/11: Conversation with Anson Stewart12: Halper, Jeff. “The Palestinians: Warehousing a ‘Surplus People.’” http://www.icahd.org/node/33013: “Background on the Restriction of Movement.” B’tselem, http://www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement14: “Veolia Environnement” Who Profits? Exposing the Israeli Occupation Industry. http://whoprofits.org/company/veo-lia-environnement

documented incarceration rate in the world, mass incarceration, including the explosive growth of private prisons and immigration detention facilities, is the most overt form of warehousing in the United States, but not the only one.15

We see warehousing and its global scope in the lead up to most Olympic games and the World Cup. After receiving Israeli training, for example, the Beijing police used ‘counterinsurgency’ tactics to ensure the invisibility of Beijing’s thousands of displaced slum dwellers and to exclude them from any economic benefit that supposedly comes with the hosting of the Olympics.

Johnson describes the globalization of what he calls “the pacification industry,” the control of populations and public space.16 Johnson traces how the strategies and technologies of counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, surveillance, policing, urban warfare, and incarceration are routinely “translated to other systems of injustice across the world.”17 The state of Israel, in particular, has become a hub for the pacification industry. The West Bank and Gaza, he argues, are

treated as ‘laboratories’ for methods of social control. The ‘expertise’ of a long-standing occupying force is exported in trainings led by Israeli police and military. These trainings, and the institutional relationships that often develop afterwards, have been held in India, China, and Canada. But no other nation has a closer relationship with the Israeli security apparatus than the United States. Some of the many trainees include police forces in Alameda County; Atlanta; Boston; Cambridge, MA; Commerce, GA; Detroit; Duxbury, MA; Knoxville, TN; Los Angeles; Miami; New York City; Pembroke Pines, FL; San Francisco; San Mateo; Santa Clara; Seattle; Stamford, CT; Sterling Heights, MI; Suffolk County, NY as well as Georgia Tech University and the Maryland Department of Transportation.18

The militarization of U.S. police forces through the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror” that fuels what we have come to understand as the “the New Jim Crow” of mass incarceration are all part of the “pacification industry.”19

In Palestine we see starkly the interlocking mechanisms of

land annexation, housing and transportation discrimination, and mass incarceration in the service of military occupation, Apartheid, and settler colonialism. We see these mechanisms mirrored in the United States in ‘urban planning,’ the defunding and corporatization of public services like transportation, and mass incarceration. We should not be surprised that the same corporations design, operate, and profit from these systems. What the pacification industry means is that people are not only warehoused in literal jails, but the open-air prisons that are slums, surrounded by militarized police and no affordable ride out.

Today one out of every three city-dwellers live in a slum.20 Limiting a population’s ability to travel reliably outside of ghettoized neighborhoods keeps people out of sight and out of mind and any potential resistance contained. Corporatization of transportation is the outsourcing and entrenchment of one form of warehousing making up one tentacle of the pacification industry.

15: “The Influence of the Private Prison Industry in Immigration Detention.” Detention Watch Network. http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/privateprisons16: “The Matrix of Control: From Israel to the World,” an interview with Jimmy Johnson: http://peoplesgeography.com/2009/09/08/the-matrix-of-control-from-israel-to-the-world-2/ 17: ibid. 18: Johnson, Jimmy. “Israel’s Export of Occupation Police Tactics.” Electronicintifada.com, Oct 9, 2009. http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-export-occupation-police-tactics/848519: Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness 20: “State of the World’s Cities 2006/7.” UN-HABITAT, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/11292101_alt.pdf and “The Dawn of an Urban World.” World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/kobe_centre/publications/hiddencities_media/p1_who_un_habitat_hidden_cities.pdf

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One year ago today, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an historic resolution recognizing the human right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation. Two months later,

the Human Rights Council adopted a second resolution affirming that

the right to water & sanitation are living documents waiting to be used for transformational change around the world

drinking water and sanitation are human rights, and setting out the new obligations and responsibilities all governments now carry to develop appropriate tools and mechanisms to progressively achieve the full realization of these rights. Together the two resolutions represent an extraordinary

breakthrough in the international struggle for the right to safe clean drinking water and sanitation and a crucial milestone in the fight for water justice.

The struggle to achieve this milestone was a long one and blocked for years by some powerful corporations and governments who prefer to view

why governments are on the hook to ensure clean, safe water for everyone

WRITTEN BY maude barlow, original publisher: alternet, july 27 2011, permission to reprintart by maia brown

water as a private commodity to be put on the open market for sale. Indeed, forty-one countries, including the U.K., Australia, Japan, Canada and the U.S., abstained in the General Assembly vote. (However, in a welcome and surprise move, the U.S. voted in favour of the Human Rights Council’s resolution.) Some of these governments insist that they are still under no new obligations in this area, as they claim the General Assembly vote was not binding. This is incorrect. Because the Human Rights Council resolution is an interpretation of two exiting international treaties, it clarifies that the resolution adopted by the General Assembly is legally binding in international law. Said an official UN press release, “The right to water and sanitation is a human right, equal to all other human rights, which implies that it is justiciable and enforceable.”

This means that whether or not they voted for the right to water and sanitation, every member state of the United Nations is now required to prepare a Plan of Action for the Realization of the Right to Water and Sanitation and to report to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on its performance in this area. This plan of action must meet three obligations: the Obligation to Respect, whereby the state must refrain from any action or policy that interferes

with these rights, such as removing water and wastewater services because of an inability to pay as has happened in inner city Detroit and Boston; the Obligation to Protect, whereby the state is obliged to prevent third parties from interfering with these rights, such as protecting local communities from industrial pollution and inequitable extraction of water; and the Obligation to Fulfil, whereby the state is required to adopt any additional measures directed toward the realization of these rights, such as providing water and sanitation services to communities currently without them. In the U.S., this would include the 13 percent of Native American households without access to clean water and sanitation.

Lack of access to clean water and sanitation is the number one killer of children in our world. A new report on diarrhea by the World Health Organization says that in the global South, a child dies every three and a half seconds of water-borne diseases. In every case, if their parents could pay for clean water, these children would not be dying. While the resolutions recognizing the human right to water and sanitation will not immediately resolve this travesty, they do set the stage for a plan of action to address it. All countries now have the obligation to ensure,

in a progressive manner and within available resources, that all of their people have access to water and sanitation services and special attention is to be paid to the most vulnerable and marginalized groups.

And while not specifically prohibiting private water delivery, the resolutions make it clear that the state retains the responsibility and authority to provide these services and can step in to prevent cut-offs to the poor or the charging of exorbitant water rates by for-profit providers. Clearly, in recognizing the human right to water and sanitation, the United Nations has endorsed the notion that water is a public trust best delivered on a not-for-profit basis.

The first anniversary of this historic General Assembly resolution presents an incredible opportunity for groups and communities around the world suffering from water shortages, unsafe drinking water and poor or non-existent sanitation services. It is not often that a new right is recognized at the United Nations, especially around an issue as increasingly political and urgent as the global water crisis. The right to water and sanitation are living documents waiting to be used for transformational change around the world.

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remunicipalization

art by maia brown

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We were tired of just resisting with so little space left to build. At some point in our conversations we discovered that we were exhausted, that all of our energies were just going to create more “blockades” to privatization with no energy left to create or imagine a different way.

It was generally agreed that the democratization of water management was far from a reality and that the strategies and political opportunities for developing management alternatives continued

to be elusive. The experience of many participants

was that there was rarely sufficient financing, or support by governments, state institutions, donors, and international organizations for the implementation of alternatives, despite many inspiring examples. The movements’ evaluation of reclaimed utilities in Bolivia and elsewhere was that popular mobilization had not met the challenges of government resistance, institutional corruption, and the technical and financial weaknesses of the existing structures.

So we created the Platform for Public and Community Water Systems (Plataforma APC).

Over the past decade, we have

removed bad governments, kicked out corporations and rejected many of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund policies after they stole our natural resources and ruined an already crippled economy with their “shock therapy” prescriptions. We also successfully waged the historic “Cochabamba Water War of 2000” that recovered our water from an international consortium. The people from Uruguay won the first battle in the polls introducing the right to water in their constitution and their example has spread all over Latin America. Social

the rising water in bolivia and latin america

WRITTEN BY marcela oliveraart by maia brown

movements have mobilized and have changed the political face of this continent.

But the struggles haven’t stopped. Water embraces and strengthen other urgent challenges that are happening now across the continent. Water is the one issue where everything intersects; it crosses over into political and economic issues in every region and in every country. People’s struggles over water are about having their voices heard, having better living conditions, establishing their rights to basic survival needs, and determining their own political and economic futures. That is what we call direct democracy. In Bolivia, the water rights struggle has given birth to a political shift. Water has become a symbol of our struggle for political and economic autonomy and for regaining our dignity.

The Challenges of WinningIn 2004, we recognized in the South that there was more North-South collaboration on water rights than South-South relations. This inspired the creation of the Red VIDA, an interamerican water network with founding members from both American continents, including the US and Canada. It has been very important to work with people across The Americas who are redefining the meaning of “cooperation” as an equal collaboration among

water warriors with horizontal rather than vertical decision-making and with our northern colleagues respecting our region-specific strategies for reaching our mutual goals. It is largely out of these years of collaboration and network-building that have emerged potential public alternatives to privatization.

Public-Public and Public-Community PartnershipsWe have found that the best way to fight against the privatization of water utilities is by improving our water systems, making them accountable to the population, involving social movements in the effort and having workers and the community participating directly in this work. One very important alternative to privatization is to form Public-Public Partnerships to manage water systems.

In August 2008 we organized a regional water seminar in Cochabamba, with numerous representatives from various water movements in The Americas. We got together because, for a long time, we were wondering about how to address the challenges facing us. We were tired of just resisting with so little space left to build. At some point in our conversations we discovered that we were exhausted, that all of our energies were just going to create more “blockades” to privatization with no energy left to create or

imagine a different way. It was generally agreed that

the democratization of water management was far from a reality and that the strategies and political opportunities for developing management alternatives continued to be elusive. The experience of many participants was that there was rarely sufficient financing, or support by governments, state institutions, donors, and international organizations for the implementation of alternatives, despite many inspiring examples. The movements’ evaluation of reclaimed utilities in Bolivia and elsewhere was that popular mobilization had not met the challenges of government resistance, institutional corruption, and the technical and financial weaknesses of the existing structures.

So we created the Platform for Public and Community Water Systems (Plataforma APC). We recognized that public utilities are not just the ones that belong to the state or the municipalities, but also the ones that are run by the community; that we really do not need the intervention of the state’s bureaucracy in order to create solidarity among us.

The Platform for Public and Community Water Systems was organized in 2009 as an association of social and labor organizations, public institutions, and public water utilities that are working to

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strengthen and improve public water systems in the Americas. Its founding members include: Engineers without Borders from Cataluña, Spain; the Commissions for the Defense of Water and life from Bolivia and Uruguay; Food and Water Watch from the United States; Red VIDA (an intercontinental network of organizations in the Americas working for the defense of water); among other organizations and water utilities working on water issues in the Americas.

The purpose of the Platform is to support and create public-public partnerships across The Americas based on the principles of public participation and accountability, transparency, and direct participation of utility workers and members of social movements. The Platform is currently supporting initiatives in several countries in the Americas.

This comes at a time when the World Bank and its sister financial institutions, recognizing their past failures in water privatization, are seeking new forms of such privatization under the guise of public collaboration. For example, they are promoting Public-Private Partnerships in countries where they have failed in the past. But the water

movements have also progressed from resistance to

the construction of alternatives and to just and equitable propositions that serve the people and preserve their right to water.

There is much yet to be done. We have learned many lessons from our past successes and failures. We continue to join in collaboration with our colleagues around the world to find new ways of guaranteeing that all people look forward to life and a planet that is sustainable.

In the midst of our fights to control our own resources, a very important development is the nature of connections that have begun between people. This is one of the things that we’re recovering from what globalization has stolen. It’s not just about the economic policies that are being imposed on us; it’s also about bringing us into contact with one another. We’re building alliances among ourselves that respect the differences and the diversity of experiences. It serves to broaden our understanding of the daily challenges we each face while building a network of support that keeps us strong.

The demands of the people for access to water infrastructure are part of the social demands for new models of economic development. Such development must emphasize the transversal character of water and the challenge to construct new

Andean government-governed relations. But the search for new formulae to co-manage natural resources, of which water is a central component, between popular organizations and the state have only just begun.

The struggle over who controls water is ongoing. What we’re fighting for in Bolivia and Latin America now is to put together effective, participatory control by the people over our social resources of water, health and education as an alternative to private control. We know that continued action in our streets and our communities is essential to social change. In Latin America, that involves the politics of mass mobilization combined with our construction of autonomous alternatives to old models.

Marcela Olivera is a water commons organizer. After graduating from the Catholic University in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Marcela worked for four years in Cochabamba as the key international liaison for the Coalition for the Defense of Water and Life, the organization that fought and defeated water privatization in Bolivia. Since 2004 she has been developing and consolidating an inter-American citizens’ network on water justice named “Red VIDA”.

There is an English saying that “whiskey is for everyone but water is for fighting over”. Indeed, many countries have gone to war for the control of water. This life-giving resource has been a major contributing cause to many conflicts in the past: the annexation of territories and occupation of the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip by Israel in 1967; the conflicts between India and Pakistan over their shared rivers for more than a decade; and even during the celebrated Camp David peace agreement, Egyptian leaders made threats to other countries over the waters of the Nile, just to name a few.

The 21st century, too, has seen many battles for and over water but of a different kind. The most iconic example is Bolivia’s water wars. In the year 2000, tens of thousands of people came out in the streets of Cochabamba, Bolivia to clamor for the cancellation of a very

new approaches and alternatives to privatization and commodification of water

controversial service contract with a private water company, Aguas del Turnari and return SEMAPA, the city’s public water company, to the state. Known worldwide as the Cochabamba water wars, it provided the world a picture of the impact of privatization of water services and commodification of water and of the struggles against this. It was a testimony that in the 21st century, water had become one of the pivotal arenas around which social mobilizations and campaigns from the global South to the global North were being launched. Even in countries under crisis like Greece, popular opposition to privatization is rife.

There is now a growing global “rethink of privatization”. According to David MacDonald, a Canadian professor at the University of Kingston and co-director of the Municipal Services Project (MSP), a global initiative that systematically explores alternatives to the privatization

and commercialization of service provision in the health, water, sanitation and electricity sectors, “Privatization is collapsing. We have to be ready with what we will replace it with.” The big challenge for the movements is always to be one step ahead of the privateers. When you have won the struggle, successfully kicked out the corporate private sector, what do you do? What do you put in place? It is equally challenging, if not difficult, to sit down and agree on a collective political project, that is constructing and building alternatives that are people-centered, ecologically sustainable, inclusive, participatory, democratic, equitable and transparent.

The upside is that the movements for the defense of water and challenging of corporate power have risen to the occasion. Not only because the movements need to figure out how to provide water to

turning the tides:WRITTEN BY mary ann manahan, august 2014

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the poor and waterless but also of the collective aspiration to change the dominant corporate water discourse and change the ‘flow’. The last five years saw a new movement to reclaim, redefine, and reconstruct public options and paths for water governance.

Revolutionizing water management and governance

On March 2012, the Municipal Services Project released the Alternatives to Privatization: Public Options for Essential Services in the Global South, the first global survey of its kind that provide rigorous and robust platform for evaluating different alternatives, identifying what make them successful and allowing for comparisons across regions and sectors.

The alternatives on water cover examples such as innovative models of public service delivery in Tamil Nadu, India, which are neither private nor old-style public, which is corrupt, moribund and inefficient. Under the engineers of the Change Management Initiative of the Tamil Nadu Water Board, a public utility, water was supplied to 60 million people of Tamil Nadu and

irrigation water was delivered to the farms of more

than one million families. This was accompanied by attitudinal changes, shifts in perspective and transformation in the institutional culture of water engineers using a process-oriented participatory training methodology based on the traditional practice of Koodam, a Tamil word that means gathering, social space, and consensus-building, implying harmony, diversity, equality and justice. The transformation in the institutional culture of water engineers, and the changes in perspectives and relations between local communities and the Tamil Nadu water utility have facilitated the implementation of the joint management of water resources between them. Women in the communities took a pro-active role in taking care of their water sources, ensuring safe and quality drinking water for all members of the community. The communities instituted their own oversight and monitoring systems to check the quality of their water sources. These have been strong positive tools for improving public water service delivery, caring for water sources and instituting community empowerment.

But the notions of the public have also been expanded and reclaimed by citizens and people in the global South. In Colombia,

social participation has taken on new forms. A national public-community partnership led to the strengthening of communal aqueducts in the country. Led by the water movement in Colombia, communities were systematically organized and provided with the necessary technical, legal and economic support to ensure that good quality water is delivered to both the rural and urban areas. Women also played a vital role as leaders in the strengthening and structuring of the aqueducts.

Similarly, the global North also provides innovative alternatives to privatization. A new form of public-community or upstream-downstream partnerships in New York City enabled farmers to implement a new farming program that is compatible with a healthy watershed and pure, quality water for the city. Using the philosophy a “good environment will produce good water”, the New York City Water and Sewerage System, a public utility that supplies water to 9 million people, invested public resources into the farmers’ watershed protection program, which ensured not only clean water to the city but also the survival of small farming in the rural area.

Another important global trend now is the increasing number

of remunicipalization, i.e. the reclaiming of privatized water by the state. The publication, “Remunicipalisation: Putting Back Water into Public Hands”, edited by Martin Pigeon, David McDonald, Olivier Hoedeman and Satoko Kishimoto, emphasized that “while remuncipalisation is by no means simple, the cases in Malaysia and the cities of Paris, Dar es Saalam in Tanzania, Buenos Aires in Argentina and Hamilton, Canada prove that public management can offer services that the private sector could never deliver”. Remunicipalization, according to the authors, “is a credible, realistic and attractive option for citizens and policy makers dissatisfied with privatisation”. Further, it illustrates that privatization is not irreversible.

Concretely, the return of Paris’ water services to the municipalities in January 2010 made a significant break from the commercial dominance of the French multinationals in the water sector. By establishing the single public operator, Eau de Paris, France was able to restructure, institute important reforms and reclaim public interest. According to Anne Le Strat, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of water, some initial advantages have already been observed as a

result of remunicipalization. One is the big profits, an estimated 35 million Euros that the reform has produced and re-invested in water services; two, the lowered cost of water per cubic meter (at one Euro compared to the 260 percent increase with the private company); and finally new services are underway.

The changing tides also travel to Asia. In Indonesia, civil society, unions and Jakarta’s citizens are calling for the termination of the city’s contract with Suez. Fourteen years after the privatization of water in Jakarta, Suez has failed to deliver its promise of adequate water supply through pipe connections in the city. The residents had resorted to over-extraction of groundwater which created new environmental problems. A recent report of the Supreme Audit Board of Indonesia (BPK) concluded that the private contract is non-transparent, unfair and void. Jakarta is the last big city in the global South where Suez still has a concession contract. The termination of this contract, therefore, will have a big political impact not only in Jakarta but all over the world.

Overcoming the challenge of the “Green Economy”

A clear message from these

just alternatives is the need to have a clear, long-term vision of/for water: the kind of public water management that will replace privatization, ensure the fulfillment of the right to water and sanitation and emphasize that water is a ‘commons’. These just alternatives also reconfigure relationships between state and society— putting an emphasis on the importance of active citizenship and social movements from below.

However, there is still much to be done in terms of articulating and implementing progressive models of water management and governance. Learning from the past and thinking of creative ways to achieve the “future we want” are but necessary. A stable institutional, policy, legal framework and political will are needed for such alternatives to develop and flourish.

Public-public partnerships and public-community partnerships are often vulnerable to the manipulation of international financial institutions, financing and free trade agreements. The corporate private sector will always attempt to hijack not only the language of civil society and social movements but also alternative proposals. Indeed, despite the general recognition that

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privatization has failed to deliver on its promise of adequate and effective water services provision, the corporate private sector is resilient.

More recently, the “green economy” proposal under the Rio+20 discussions provide a new encompassing threat. In the “Green Economy” (GE), water is treated as a natural capital, an economic asset which fundamentally puts a price on all the dimensions, services and functions of water. The GE proposes that the instruments of the markets are powerful tools for conserving water, improving water quality, ensuring efficiency of water use and protecting water itself. The GE therefore goes beyond mere privatization and commodification of water as a public good and service. It sets the stage for the creation of markets where water and its ecosystem functions (e.g. water purification by pristine watersheds or carbon sequestration of forests and oceans) can be traded, while the people’s rights and

Other online sources on water alternatives:Blue Planet Project: http://www.blueplanetproject.net/

Focus on the Global South: www.focusweb.org

Food and Water Watch: www.foodandwaterwatch.org

Municipal Services Project: www.municipalservicesproject.org

Reclaiming Public Water: www.waterjustice.org

Remunicipalisation Tracker: www.remunicipalisation.org

Our Water Commons: www.ourwatercommons.org

Transnational Institute: www.tni.org

Mary Ann Manahan is a program officer with Focus on the Global South and has a background in sociology and women and development studies. Based in Manila, she works on Focus’ Reclaiming the Commons program. She maybe reached at mbmanahan@focusweb.org

common interests are ignored. Water as the engine of the “Green Economy” also pays little attention to hydrological inter-linkages and poses a grave threat to the future of water and ecosystems that rely on it.

To allow water and nature to be controlled by the market undermines the opportunities of local people, communities and states to protect these commons as well as ensure equitable access to water and sanitation for all and to peacefully co-exist with nature. Further, the “green economy” potentially stands to reverse the gains achieved by social movements and communities that are fighting privatization.

The challenges maybe daunting but for sure the movements for the defense of water and Mother Earth will be up to it. Rising to the occasion, collective responses to stop the GE and put alternative visions and concrete proposals by social movements are already underway...

veolia around the world

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Mary Ann Manahan is a program officer with Focus on the Global South-Philippines. She works on the commons—land and water, social, gender, and environmental justice issues. She maybe reached at mbmanahan@focusweb.org.

1. Alarming trend: Veolia, a French multinational, aims for global domination in the fields of water, waste management and energy Veolia Environnement is a French multinational company that provides a full range of environmental management services in the fields of water, waste management (collection, pipe systems maintenance, urban cleaning services and waste-flow management, as well as waste treatment and recycling), energy (except trading, production and sale) and transportation in 67 countries covering nearly 163 million people. Veolia was originally part of Vivendi (previously Generale des Eaux), which ran into serious financial and debt troubles after its expansion into media, film, telecommunications, music and book publishing.1

Dubbed as a water baron, Veolia is one of the twin global giants that dominates the market in water and wastewater management; the other is Suez. In 2013, it reported €22.3 B in revenue, which is 1.8% less than the previous year at constant scope and exchange rates; while its financial debt decreased to € 8.2 B compared to € 10.8B in 2012. Veolia has varied clientele ranging from individuals to municipalities, to industries and business. It employs 202,800 workers around the world.2

Veolia Water remains the multinational’s major operating segment contributing 45.8% (€10.2 B) share toits overall revenue. Veolia Environmental Services, which accounts for its waste and raw materials, has a 36.2% (€8.1 B) share; Veolia Energy with 16.8% (€3.7 B) share and other services, 1.2% (€0.3 B).

Veolia Water operates 4,532 water production plants and 3,442 wastewater treatment plants. Its waste division has 570,000 business customers (excluding industrial maintenance) and 719 waste-processing facilities. Finally, its energy segment operates 770 local and district heating and cooling networks, manages 163,000 energy systems and 4,300 industrial sites.

Europe is still Veolia’s traditional market, with half of its business operating in France, UK, Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, and the rest of the continent. Outside of the region, Asia Pacific (including Australia and New Zealand) makes up 9.1%, followed by North America (8.5%), Africa and the Middle East (3.9%) and South America (1.1%).

2. Wolf in sheep’s clothing: Restructured Veolia in 2011 and a New Veolia in 2012 Owing to the economic crisis in Italy, North Africa and the US, Veolia suffered a net loss in its revenues. For this reason, in 2011, the company announced a corporate overhaul that included divestitures, restructuring and a geographical scale back.

The result of its so-called transformation is a new brand and slogan: “resourcing the world is what we do.”3 The ‘transformed’ company capitalized on the climate crisis, resource scarcity, new

veolia in asia-pacific: a primerfive reasons why you should challenge veoliaby mary ann manahan, april 13, 2015

1: Ann-Christin Sjolander Holland (2006), “The Water Business: Corporations versus People”, Zed Books, p. 15.2: See Veolia 2013 Annual and Sustainability Report, http://www.veoliawaterst-sea.com/vwst/ressources/files/1/37353,RADD-Veolia-2013_GB-1.pdf (Accessed April 1, 2015), pp.68-69.3: Ibid, p. 8.

development challenges such as urbanization, as well as emerging opportunities in food, mining, oil and gas, toxic pollution clean-up and other raw material recovery, and environmental services. Employing a sustainable development coordinator, its 2013 Annual and Sustainability Report can be mistaken as any civil society or UN document in the sense that the New Veolia talks about “designing and implementing solutions aimed at improving access to resources while at the same time protecting and renewing those same resources.”4 This is a significant shift as the French multinational now talks about (a) creating high added value, (b) addressing environmental requirements, economic and social concerns and (c) a circular economy where water, wastewater and energy are interconnected. Its Chief Operating Officer François Bertreau further adds that “The new Veolia is more customer-focused, better equipped to deal with the specific characteristics of its markets and structured to make even more progress.”5

The company’s new strategy is now three-fold: target the most promising environmental markets, i.e. those that are supported by strong demand and solvent clients and where it has a distinctive competitive edge; increase business with industrial customers; and focus on the most dynamic countries and regions.

It also streamlined its organization—integrated its operations, established a single Veolia in each country, and set up regional management teams. A new department was created—Innovation and Markets--which aims to create new business for the New Veolia, for instance transforming a client’s

waste into energy for another. In 2013, this New Veolia won new contracts—half from the traditional markets and the remaining half in emerging economies and fast growing regions.

But behind Veolia’s media-savvy, politically correct slogan and branding is the fact that the company intends to profit from various interrelated crises. It expects to win new contracts (which it has already, in 2014, it secured more than €9 Billion in new contracts) and strengthen its position in its traditional markets.

In other words: new image, new sources of profits.

3. Increasing presence--and therefore revenues--in Asia-Pacific in the last 10 yearsIn the last 10 years, Veolia’s revenues in Asia-Pacific has grown exponentially from €391 M to €2.0261 these largely came from contracts in the water sector. The growth is expected as the French company has looked at China and Australia as niche and main ‘markets’ outside of Europe. It has contracts in Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

It employs 26,081 workers in the region (4,168 employees in Ocenia and 21,913 in Asia).

In terms of water management (drinking water production, distribution, customer relations, and wastewater treatment) in municipalities, Veolia has won multi-million Euro contracts through various mechanisms including build-operate-transfer (BOT) and PPPs.

4: Ibid.5: Ibid., p. 17.

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6: Globalization Monitor, An Open Letter to Veolia Environment S.A. regarding tap water pollution in Lanzhou., March 6, 214, http://globalmon.org.hk/content/open-letter-veolia-environment-sa-regarding-tap-water-pollution-lanzhou (Accessed April 2, 2015)

7: Ibid.8: Polaris Institute and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, “Public Risks, Private Profits: Veolia Environnement, Profles of

Canada’s public-private partnership industry, June 2014, p. 14 http://cupe.ca/sites/cupe/files/veolia_e.pdf (Accessed April 2, 2015)

Some examples:

Australia: Veolia has a number of wastewater and water supply contracts in the country. It has been contracted by Sydney Water, a public water company, to design, build and operate a sewage/wastewater treatment facility in the Gerringong-Gerroa area. In 2014, Veolia secured a 10-year operation for the production of drinking water and wastewater treatment plants worth more than €176M in Hunter Water, Australia. Further, it upgraded three wastewater treatment plants at Port Kembla, Wollongong in New South Wales, where it designed, built and operated the facilities.

China: In 1997, Veolia won its first management contract in the city of Tianjin. China has been seen as a main market by Veolia in terms of industrial and municipal clientele. Overall, the company is responsible for the water supply of more than 17 municipalities,

autonomous regions and special administrative regions including Chengdu, Beijing, Nangchang, Shenzen and Tianjin comprising a population of about 43 million people.6 In Shanghai-Pudong, Shanghai’s business district and a leading economic and financial center in Asia and the world, Veolia with the Pudong Water Corporation are managing Pudong’s entire water service for 4 million people under a Private-Public Partnership (PPP) contract since 2005. The contract is a first in China—with Veolia producing 1.5 million cubic meters of water daily. It also provides water supply in the four districts of Lanzhou province, serving 2.4 million people.7

India: In 2012, Veolia won three separate contracts—two in the capital city of New Delhi and one in the city of Nagpur, state of Maharashtra. On March 2012, Orange City Water Limited (OCWL), a joint venture between Veolia and an Indian company,

was awarded a 25-year Private-Public Partnership under the Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s ambitious Jawarhalal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission to operate and maintain the city’s entire water network.

On November 12, 2012, Veolia entered into a joint venture with Swach Environment and won a 15-year contract to manage western New Delhi’s drinking water, production and distribution as well as the management of the water department. Earlier in May of that year, Veolia was awarded a 13-year contract by the city, worth US$ 54 million, to build and operate a new wastewater treatment plant that will serve New Delhi’s west zone.8

Japan: Veolia has been active in Japan since 2002. It manages numerous contracts throughout the country, which covers 3 million people for wastewater services alone. Further, it has water service management contacts in the cities of Tokyo,

9: Veolia 2013, pp. 30-31.10: Polaris, p. 14.11: David Hall, Violeta Corral, Emanuele Lobina, and Robin de la Motte, “Water privatisation and restructuring in Asia-

Pacific”, December 2004 (with minor corrections January 2005), London: Public Services International Research Unit, p. 8.

Kyoto (2012 contract) and Osaka, where the company serves 25 million people or 20% of the country’s population.9

On February 2012, three contracts valued at more than US$ 66 million were awarded to Veolia Water. The company will provide water and wastewater services for the cities of Hiroshima, Kyoto and Matsuyama. Water was awarded operate and maintain contracts to provide water and wastewater services for the cities of Hiroshima, Kyoto and Matsuyama.10

But in 2013, Veolia was awarded its first comprehensive public service management contract in the archipelago, in the tourist town of Hakone known for its hotsprings or okone. The US$13 B, 5-year contract covers the complete management of water services in the districts of Midono, Italy and Shinanogi, where there are raw water resources, treatment plants, and distributions networks. As

the only multinational operating under this model in Japan, Veolia will produce 20,000m3 of water each day, serve 6,200 people, and operate 3 plants and 7 pumping stations. The company sees this as an opening to secure more contracts in the prefecture where 9 million people are residing.

South Korea: Veolia has been present in South Korea since 2001. On March 2001, Veolia entered into a joint venture with Hundai Construction in the state of Chilgok and was awarded a build-operate-transfer contract for the operation of 2 existing wastewater treatment plants over the next 23 years as well as the design, financing and construction of a new plant.11

In December 2001, Veolia was awarded by the municipality of Incheon a 20-year build, operate and transfer (BOT) contract to run two wastewater treatment plants in Songdo and Mansu areas. Veolia Korea partnered with Samsung Engineering (80-

20 partnership). This was the first BOT contract by a South Korean municipality in the water sector. The construction of the two plants took 30 months, which have a total capacity of 100,000 cubic meters per day.

More recently, Veolia Korea has won a 10-year contract to supply steam to Hongwon Paper Manufacturing, one of the major paper and pulp companies in the country. Amounting to €150 million, this is the first energy services contract for Veolia in South Korea.

These examples show how Asia has become an important market for Veolia. More than a decade ago, the company has less water business in the whole Asia-Pacific than Africa and Latin America. With the growth in the region and more countries liberalizing their water sectors, Veolia was able to also grow its business, win more contracts and therefore, expand its presence.

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12: Ibid, p. 9.13: Corporate Accountability International, “ Behind the World Bank’s Spin: Private Water Failures in Manila and Nagpur”, November 2014, pp.8-9.

14: Anjaya Anparthi, Two-thirds of Nagpur’s water supply lost, NMC remains clueless, May 20, 2014 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/Two-thirds-of-Nagpurs-water-supply-lost-NMC-remains-clueless/articleshow/35353540.cms (Accessed April 2, 2014)

15: Yao Lan, “Veolia under fire for water quality in China”, April 21, 214, http://www.ecns.cn/cns-wire/2014/04-21/110421.shtml (Accessed April 10, 2015)

16: Globalization Monitor, Open Letter17: David Hall, et.al., , p.9.

4. Water contract c o n t r o v e r s i e s — p r i c e hikes, mal-performance, inefficiencies, tap water pollution and corruptionVeolia Asia has suffered a number of scandals and controversies in its water operations in the region. This can be summed up to price hikes, irregularities in the bidding process, bad performance in terms of meeting promised targets, inefficiencies, and tap water pollution.

In 1995, the city of Adelaide signed a US$ 1.5 billion contract with United Water, a joint venture of Veolia and Thames Water. The contract handed over the waterworks of the city to the company. But irregularities in the bidding process led to government investigations and parliamentary inquiry. Over the next years of the company’s operation, basic water rates rose to 59% and workers lost their jobs.12

In Nagpur, India, Orange City Water Limited, a joint venture between Veolia and Vishwaraj Environment, an Indian infrastructure company, has failed to deliver on its promises of

infrastructure improvements and 24/7 uninterrupted water service. Instead, “low-income residents have endured multiple project delays, inequitable water distribution and service shutdowns.”13 Protests from residents on contract violations and obligations and allegations of corruption have compelled city officials to conduct investigations and public hearings. Under OCWL’s operations, two-third of Nagpur’s water was also lost with no clear explanations—that’s 432 million liters each day, enough to provide for the basic water needs of 8.64 million people per day.14

In China, various cases of tap water pollution have been reported by Chinese civil society groups such as Globalization Monitor in Hong Kong. The company was involved in 13 water pollution case since 2007 in different cities around the country, including Shanghai, Beijing, Qingdao, Zhuhai, Haikou, Urumqi and Lanzhou.15 In the northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou, province of Gansu, a high level of benzene was found in tap water—200 mg per liter, which is 20 times higher than the country’s national safety limits of 10 mg per liter. Later on, local authorities attributed this to the crude oil leaking from Veolia’s pipeline, which affected 2.4 million people. Similarly, Shanghai Pudong Veolia Water Co. Ltd., ironically hailed as a success story, was fined by the Chinese government for violating waste pollution prevention measures and for discharging sewage beyond the allowed limit in the first quarter of 2013. In Qingdao, Veolia’s Maidao sewage treatment plant was found to contain excessive levels of fecal coliform similar to the case of its plant in Haikou.16 5. Cancellation of Contracts Research groups such as Public Services International Research Unit has documented at least two contracts that were cancelled in China (Xian Water in 2002) and Malaysia (Selangor’s BOT contract to operate 26 water treatment plants). Two more proposals were abandoned—one in Taiwan where negotiations on a water treatment plant failed and in the Philippines (Cebu), where opposition by the local water union compelled Veolia’s local partner to drop its unsolicited BOT proposal.17

Behind the lofty words, old fears of water privatization die hard.Today, Veolia would call itself the white knight finally bringing

water to the poor Indians, in the name of the “right to water” and the “Millennium Development Goals.” But behind this revamping of water privatization the same reality prevails: a reality comprised of financial opacity, incredible promises left unfulfilled, price increases of water, social conflicts, and the private monopolisation of public funds. New methods of “social business” continue to hide the same goal: get the poor used to have to pay more for their water.

In 2012, Veolia proudly announced its first global privatisation contract for water in India, in the city of Nagpur (2.5 million inhabitants). And just a few months later, the group invited a delegation of French journalists to come celebrate its “success.” But alas, at that same moment, the complaints had already started to pile up against the private operator, due to delays in work and ill-treatment by some of its local officials. Today, the private management is a financial pit. Large sums of money have been “spent” there without actually improving the situation. Riots have taken place in certain areas against the Veolia officials, andlitigious proceedings by the local authority against the private operator have been announced.

Wherever the French water industry giant happens to be, such as in Delhi or in the Karnataka area, the same complaints arise: vague contracts favouring private businesses, increases in prices, and diversion of water from the public sphere to profit the areas under private management...

Official publicity presents India as a new El Dorado which will allow the French multinational water companies to conquer new markets all while tending to its own image. In reality, with the wave of “public-private partnerships,” what is happening is the pillaging of public funds where access to water for the poorest is only a small margin of importance.

in india, veolia favors profits and abuse over the right to water

photo via water.org

BY friends of the earth france, reprinted with permission

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On March 15, 2014, Durban activists occupied the Veolia Plant in South Durban for about an hour in honor of Israeli Apartheid Week. IAW is held in over 250 cities internationally, and South Africa plays a significant role in the awareness campaign even as the long battle for apartheid-

era victims in South Africa is still evident 20 years

in south durban, south africainto democracy.

In Durban specifically, in the early 2000’s the Municipality handed wastewater management in the highly polluted area of South Durban to the privately owned French company. As in Palestine and the U.S., Veolia profits at the expense of the environment and ratepayers. The French company provides recycled wastewater to industries in the South Durban

basin, themselves accused of contributing to an alarmingly high rate of cancers and respiratory health issues in the area.

The ‘occupation’ on the grounds of the Durban Veolia plant set a precedent for more action against the company. Activists insist that Veolia has been allowed to operate in South Africa with great impunity and mass action will be stepped up.

activists occupy veolia plantWRITTEN BY sarah khan

photos courtesy of sarah khan

Early in the morning of June 2nd, 2014, Marco Antonio Cuadra walked into a bus depot as he had done for his preceding 25 years as a bus driver in Chile’s sprawling capital city. This morning, however, instead of setting out to cover his routes across Santiago, he doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire, shouting, “This is for the workers! Let it mark a precedent!” By the time his coworkers grabbed fire extinguishers from their buses and doused the flames, 90% of his body had been severely burned. Waiting for an ambulance to arrive, one of the drivers asked Cuadra why he taken such drastic action. The pained response (as seen in an extremely graphic video uploaded to Youtube): “For

privatization’s human cost: the crisis of bus drivers in santiagoour coworkers – because of how [corporate managers] abuse us, how they don’t pay our wages, and how they fire union leaders, but nobody complains. ¿Hasta cuándo?”

Two weeks earlier, Veolia, through its Transdev branch and Chilean subsidiary Redbus, had initiated the firing of Cuadra, a leader of Redbus Union 2. The company claimed he and the treasurer of the Union, Luis Moya, failed to fulfill “the obligations expressly indicated in their work contract.” Other employees dispute this claim and note that Veolia/Redbus, a private operator for the public Transantiago/Metropolitan Public Transport Directorate, initiated the firing three days before employees

were set to present a new collective bargaining plan.

The ambulance took Cuadra to Santiago’s main hospital where he underwent a series of amputations and surgeries as his organs progressively failed over the coming weeks. His wife shared her thoughts in an interview:

“He was distraught because of all the injustice. He was enraged when he saw how [Veolia/Redbus] made the older drivers, and the workers in general, work very late, how the company didn’t respect them, and how they had to use diapers because of the lack of bathrooms and the length of the routes… I pray to God that he’ll

veolia in south america“Mr. Minister: The fault is not the worker’s, but rather the exploitative businessman” photo via el ciudadano flickr

WRITTEN BY anson stewart

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come through this so he can tell me what really happened. What I think now, based on what I saw and what his coworkers have told me, is that it was a result of utter frustration, the most extreme frustration that a human being can take.” On June 27, twenty-

five days after his act of desperation, Cuadra died from his injuries.

After Cuadra’s death, workers aligned with the Coordinadora de Trabajadores del Transantiago called for a national strike in July and complained, “From north to south, we need to know what is happening with union-busting practices. Government officials barely wait to announce things that favor businessmen, but they wait an eternity to give an answer to the workers.” A pro-labor blog editorialized, “The sacrifice of comrade Marco Cuadra is a scream suffocated by the terrible silencing of a labor law created in the dictatorship, which has been tied to the unjust treatment of thousands of workers during more than 30 years.”

Indeed, before trying to understand Cuadra’s death, it is important to understand the history that led to it.

How has the privatization of transit in Santiago evolved historically? And

are the problems that have emerged from this history of privatization unique to Chile?

The Road to TransantiagoThough Transantiago’s operations began with

a “traumatic” restructuring of the Santiago transport system from cartels of bus owners to a regional trunk-and-feeder system in 2007, the driving economic rationale behind it goes back as far as the 1950s and the Chicago Boys. The Pinochet dictatorship applied their market-based model across society, which, in the words of Professor Javier Couso, “completely undermined the concept of citizenship by transforming social rights (like education, health care, and social security) into individual problems.”

Though Pinochet transferred power to a democratically-elected president in 1990, Chile’s constitution kept in place many

of the dictatorship’s pro-market and anti-labor policies. Since then, in fact, the percentage of workers represented in collective bargaining has been cut in half, falling to 8%, and employers are able to replace striking workers without restriction. Couso summarizes the harsh reality of a neoliberal motto: “market solutions to public problems”:

In contrast with the adherence of technocratic elites to neoliberal policies, regular Chileans

A memorial for Marco Cuadra in Central Santiago

are deeply uneasy about the economic model. As early as 1998, a series of studies undertaken by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reported widespread discontent among the general population towards the radical brand of neoliberalism prevalent in the country. The problem, however, was that the failure of the model was experienced by individuals in isolation, which often led them to blame themselves for their failure to make ends meet rather than faulting the rules of the game. Thus, a typical Chilean response when asked about the state of the nation was: “The country is doing well, but I am not.” The government’s zeal for

neoliberal ideology helps explain why, even in the administration of President Lagos of the Socialist Party, Transantiago had no public bus lines.

It was within this privatization framework that, Lagos’s Minister of Transport, Javier Etcheberry was tasked with reforming Santiago’s cartels of private bus owners in the early 2000s. He actively tried to recruit foreign private operators, recalling, “What I explained to foreign firms was our long term vision. While they could start by operating only two trunk units, contracts for

the other business units would have a short duration and soon be re-tendered, and thus foreign companies were told that they could eventually expand their presence.”

Courting VeoliaIn France, Minister Etcheberry

piqued the interest of Veolia, which had initiated waste management operations in Chile in the 1990s and owned part of one of the operating companies of Bogotá’s Transmilenio bus rapid transit system. In 2004, they agreed to participate in the round of major tendering for Transantiago, but were outbid in their pursuit of Transantiago’s “crown jewel” trunk units by firms with strong political connections and Colombian and Korean capital, leaving the French company “furious” (according to an interview with Minister Etcheberry in this dissertation). They kept close tabs on Transantiago, however, and in 2006 when the owner of the local operator that had won the pilot feeder bid decided to pull out, Veolia bought them out. Red Bus was reportedly purchased by its previous owner for $9 million and sold to Veolia for only $1 million.

The reputation of Redbus under Veolia was initially solid. In 2009, the national federation of drivers’ unions voted it “best company in the country for its social climate.”

Veolia’s service was also highly regarded through operational indicators and passenger satisfaction surveys, leading the government to award them the contract for an additional feeder zone in the 2011 round of retendering. These new three-year contracts were worth 300 million euros, allowing Veolia/Redbus to expand to 10% of the total Transantiago bus fleet with 2,300 employees.

The Romance SoursAfter Veolia/Redbus was

awarded the extended contracts, service quality deteriorated markedly. By August 2012, passengers were fed up. One afternoon, people gathered at a stop waiting for Route C10, which was scheduled to arrive every five minutes, waited four times longer, then began spontaneously protesting in the streets.

The president of the Transport Commission, a conservative legislator named Gustavo Hasbún, diagnosed the protest by the Route C10 passengers as follows:

This is the second protest emerging from a problem with Redbus. During this year they began to take buses from other zones to solve problems whenever people complained. When people stopped c o m p l a i n i n g ,

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obviously Redbus returned the buses that they had been using to supplement service in the areas of complaint, and the complaints arose again. So we have here a structural problem – there is a problem in the business model of the company and clearly drastic means must be taken. The people cannot keep bearing the cost…

He called for the termination of Veolia/Redbus’s contracts after the riders’ spontaneous protest:

“It is not enough to just charge fines to the companies when they already have them internalized in their costs. We need to be much harsher and, in this case… I believe that it’s appropriate for the Minister of Transport to evaluate terminating Redbus’s contracts, because this situation is clearly affecting the quality of life of many middle- and working-class Chileans.”Since winning the expanded contract, Veolia/

Redbus’s relationships soured not only with riders, but also with drivers. The company was fined by the Chilean government twice in 2012 for illegal anti-labor practices. Yet drivers felt Veolia saw these fines as merely a cost of doing business, and many of their other grievances went unaddressed.

In particular, employees accused Redbus of violating multiple national labor and health laws, through illegal contract modifications, unpaid overtime, absence of a workplace safety and training committee, insufficient timeclocks and payroll tracking, lack of provision for water and restroom facilities, deficient vacation time, erroneous paychecks, inadequate communication of benefits, and threats of frame-up terrorism charges. Finally, in November 2012, when Veolia used threats against workers in an attempt to force them into signing contracts with major

concessions, the workers went on strike, explaining:“We have seen no response from the formal process where we have

filed complaints, and in which demands were outlined in response to labor infractions, so the workers themselves protested spontaneously, without any leadership, because they are tired of the abuses and labor violations that Redbus perpetrates… We lack only chains to be enslaved.”The Minister of Transport for the conservative

Piñera administration, while acknowledging that the strike was technically illegal, called Veolia/Redbus responsible and demanded that they reach an agreement with the workers: “[The drivers] have fulfilled their role very well and very responsibly in the past, so of course the companies must reach an agreement with them.”

After five days of striking, a march with allied groups to the Transport Ministry Offices, and intense negotiations, the company agreed to back down from their demands and reinstate the workers who had gone on strike.

After negotiating an end to the 2012 strike, Veolia/Redbus continued to engage in tactics both hidden from public view and of questionable legality. At the end of 2013, the government allowed operators to increase the prices they charged for service in an unpublicized round of renegotations, since many of them claimed to be near bankruptcy (symptomatic of the lowball bids many made). Veolia extracted one of the highest increases in the fee it charged the government – about 40 pesos for each boarding, amounting to millions of dollars annually. So while bragging of profitability to investors, the company was begging to siphon more money from Transantiago, and ultimately, riders.

Even more concerning are the alleged ties between Veolia/Redbus’s management and Luis Campos Salas, who falsified documents for pro-business unions. Twenty-four such unions were shut down by the Chilean government in response to an investigative report aired in September 2014. The report alleges that Luis Campos collaborated with Redbus management to suppress labor complaints

while siphoning union dues into his personal account. As a national union federation leader, he recruited Marco Cuadra to the Redbus union, only to undermine and silence union grievances.

Such was the malfeasance against which Marco Cuadra made his last stand. Advocates of privatization often claim that establishing a profit motive will encourage efficiency and innovation for the benefit of the general public. In the case of Veolia/Redbus in Santiago, it seems to have instead encouraged

unethical and

illegal practices that harmed both workers and the general public.

Some might think that these egregious examples are unique to the history and neoliberal system of Chile. But a review of Veolia’s record in other countries shows a

strikingly similar pattern of profit-driven

abuses of labor and the public trust.

Veolia At HomePr i v at i z a t i o n

is increasing in United States transit systems; 36% of peak hour

transit vehicles in the United States were operated under contracts in 2010,

compared to 26% in 2002.

Politicians advocating

austerity bring in private operators to reduce compensation for public employees; private transit drivers receive, on average, 52% less in compensation than public ones. In addition to paying lower wages and seeking less experienced drivers, private contractors also have incentives to reduce maintenance and training costs; this may explain crash rates that are 70% higher, and breakdown rates that are 36% higher, than publicly operated transit.

Veolia is a broad environmental services conglomerate, and it has stakes in multiple transport operators, including Transdev. Veolia/Transdev employs approximately 16,000 people in North America.

Veolia and it subsidiaries’ violations of ethics and fair labor practices in the United States are legion.

In Phoenix and Tempe, the National Labor Relations Board

found Veolia to have engaged in “‘regressive, bad-faith,

and surface bargaining,’ and numerous other

unfair labor practices” leading up to a 2012 strike. A conflict of interest involving Phoenix’s mayor

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also prompted a Federal Transit Administration inquiry.

In Las Vegas, Veolia was ordered to stop “interfering with, restraining or coercing its employees in the exercise of their right to self-organization” in 2012.

San Francisco’s BART brought a Veolia executive into negotiations that eventually resulted in a 2013 strike during which two track workers died; a subsequent report commissioned by BART’s own board concluded, “Many see the hiring and promotion of [Veolia’s] Tom Hock to lead negotiations as a mistake. While some who were in bargaining stated that he was very competent and professional, others said his style was arrogant, dismissive, and he often appeared disengaged.”

In Massachusetts, Veolia had a stake in a commuter rail operator that took advantage of questionable fine reductions and double billing uncovered

by the state auditor in 2011. Veolia subsequently lost its bid to renew this operating contract, but it did win a contract to run Boston’s school buses starting in 2013. Relations with the union quickly devolved, leading to arrests on trumped up charges. And in 2014, a former Veolia/Transdev executive was appointed to head Boston Public School’s transportation division; the apparent conflict of interest gives little reason to hope for enforcing the contract for the benefit of students, families, and the public.

With various tentacles around the world, Veolia profits from abusing workers’ rights. Perhaps they are not experts in transit or sustainable mobility, but in implementing the mandates of the recent austerity craze, squeezing workers and service while siphoning away profits.

Winter in SantiagoAs June’s cold weather

advanced in Santiago, a union publication declared it would be “another harsh winter for workers” in Chile. Partly in response to Marco Cuadra’s death, unions announced a one-day protest on July 3 as well as a possible strike of 3,000 workers across Transantiago’s different private operators if coordinated collective bargaining fell through. A leader announced, “Together with the inter-union working group and Redbus, which is one of the companies which has the greatest quantity of anti-union practices and worker abuses, we want to see together what particular means for the security of workers we can approach.”

Despite reported police intimidation and management threats at bus depots on the morning of the protest in memory of Cuadra, hundreds took to the

streets. Part of the protest’s message was, “It is the profit of businessmen through public transit that generates the transit system’s crisis. In this crisis of Transantiago, along with the passengers, we the workers are the victims of profit. But we are portrayed as the movie villains, the visible face of the poor quality of the transit system.”

On September 29th, 2014, a driver for another Transantiago contractor, Juan Cerda, committed suicide. He had been prescribed anti-depressants but “pressured to return to work” despite the diagnosis, violating Chilean law. A union leader lamented, “We have had various cases of this practice, which puts the driver and passengers at risk. Although the case of Marco Cuadra is well known, the truth is that since [2007] we have had approximately 30 suicides.”

¿Hasta Cuándo?The day after Cerda’s death, a

federation of Transantiago unions put out the following statement:

Transantiago is the creation of the state and the political class to favor the businessman, facilitating his enrichment with money from all Chileans. This includes the dealmaking behind closed doors, the lack of enforcement, and the token fines. The question is, who investigates the different administrations that have made the contracts and overlook enforcement? It is not enough to enforce contracts today to calm the waters, so that tomorrow everything will continue the same…The businessmen seek every means possible to prevent the workers from organizing and fighting for our rights.

A week later, on October 6, hundreds of workers for operator Subus went on strike. The crisis erupts again.

With Transantiago operating contracts expiring soon, and workers starting to organize across different operating companies, perhaps there is hope for drivers. They demand public operations of the public transit system, and as riders grow increasingly tired of abysmal service levels, such public operation may soon be politically feasible.

But in the United States, where a mindset of austerity takes a deeper hold and privatization is on the rise, Marco Cuadra may be a harbinger of things to come.

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In this era of union-busting and concessions, school bus drivers are bucking the trend as they resist a wrecking operation conducted by Veolia/Transdev and Boston’s political establishment.

United Steelworkers Local 8751 represents about 800 school bus drivers, the majority Black, Latino, Asian, and immigrant, including from Haiti and Cape Verde. Founded in 1977 during the desegregation of Boston’s schools, the union has a history of social justice unionism, speaking out against racism, offering aid to striking workers, and international solidarity with struggles from South Africa to Palestine. “We are a fighting union,” said member Georgia Scott, describing her local.

But in 2013, the drivers found themselves calling for aid in defending their union against Veolia, after public officials awarded the French-based conglomerate the contract for Boston’s school bus service. Veolia is well-known for its record of helping governments impose “austerity,” — laying

off workers and slashing services. It is the top

steelworkers’ local refuses to bow to union-busting movesprivatizer of water globally, and specializes in privatizing other services and resources, including transportation.

Boston’s switch of contractors came in June 2013, after members had won better pay and benefits, and against a back drop of budget cuts, targeting the city’s school system, that are hitting communities of color the hardest. Forcing middle school students off yellow school buses and on to public transit is one way the district is saving millions of dollars, at the expense of student safety.

Veolia declares war. Soon after its take-over, Veolia management demanded all drivers re-apply for their jobs, even though many had driven for the district for decades. Disputes also erupted over unrealistic schedules, wage theft, disability benefits, grievance rights, discipline, and more. As Scott summarized, “Veolia has violated our contract from day one.”

Within four months, Veolia provoked 18 unfair labor practice charges and dozens of grievances. In October 2013, management again demanded that all drivers fill out job applications, after the issue was supposedly settled.

Fed-up, drivers demanded a work site meeting with management — a right outlined in their contract. Rather than meet, Veolia bosses called police, locked the gates, and stranded thousands of students. Anti-labor news outlets quickly painted Veolia’s lockout as a “wildcat strike” to turn parents against the union. Four leaders — Steve Gillis, Andre Francois, Garry Murchison, and Steve Kirschbaum — were fired, and the local was slandered as

boston school bus drivers vs. veoliaWRITTEN BY linda averill, reprint from socialism.com

photo via boston globe, wendy maeda

The drivers’ union, over 90 percent people of color, recently endorsed Black Lives Matter in Boston, saying, “USW 8751 is proudly continuing our legacy of standing rock-solid against racism.” Above: A Dorchester, Mass., support rally.

out of control with a “lunatic fringe” at the helm.

Confronted by this vicious assault, the embattled membership initiated a grass-roots campaign to gain community and labor support. This included protests, and meetings to press Veolia to reinstate their fired leaders and honor the contract.

In June 2014, when the agreement expired, Veolia escalated efforts to criminalize union activity, securing trumped-up felony charges against Kirschbaum after a work site meeting and rally.

Veolia targeted Kirschbaum, a well-known socialist active with Workers World Party, founding member of the union, grievance chair, and a respected leader within the local. Clearly the company hoped to whip up anti-radical sentiment and put the union in disarray. Instead, drivers and community supporters organized rallies and courtroom actions in Kirschbaum’s defense, and launched a political battle to expose Veolia’s red-baiting smear tactics.

In March 2015, Kirschbaum was cleared of all charges after a jury deliberated for less than an hour. Afterwards he said, “We are hoping to use the momentum of our ‘Not Guilty’ victory against the Veolia/Boston Police anti-union frame up to build toward victory on all fronts — rehiring the four and a just contract. The rank and file are exuberant and feeling the strength of their unity.”

Members know their fight goes deeper, and that Veolia boosts profits by smashing unions and pushing privatization.

In Detroit, Veolia just won a “consultant” contract to assist the Motor City in cutting its public water and sewerage department. This is the first step on the path to privatization.

Across the U.S., Veolia has pushed union busting of bus drivers in Arizona, Florida, Colorado, and other states. In Seattle, Wash., after winning a contract to provide transit service for people with disabilities, the corporation fired the entire workforce that was represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587. As in Boston, they

demanded all drivers re-apply for their jobs. Unfortunately, unlike in Boston, the union didn’t stop this anti-labor attack.

In several cities, “Stop Veolia” groups have formed to protest the company’s role in building and operating the Jerusalem light rail, which runs through Palestinian East Jerusalem and services illegal Jewish settlements.

One day stronger. In confronting this Goliath, the drivers are reaching out to other unions and movements, educating the community about Veolia’s role in pushing austerity at the behest of ruling elites, and aiding racist segregation, whether it is in Israel or Boston.

To that end, they are involved in the Black Lives Matter movement and coalitions to defend public education, to name a few endeavors. They are also organizing pressure on Mayor Tom Walsh to direct Veolia to rehire the local’s fired leaders.

At a meeting in December 2014, members voted unanimously to make amnesty for its fired leaders a condition of contract ratification.

You can help. Call Mayor Walsh at 617-635-4500 or e-mail mayor@boston.gov to support the drivers’ demands. For updates, information on how to show solidarity, and sample resolutions, go to www.bostonschoolbus5.org.

Contact Averill, a unionized Seattle bus driver, at avlinda587@gmail.com.

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Detroit

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Water is life. The People’s Water Board advocates for access, protection, and conservation of water. We believe water is a human right and all people should have access to clean and affordable water. Water is a commons that should be held in the public trust free of privatization. The People’s Water Board promotes awareness of the interconnectedness of all people and resources.People’s Water Board Coalition Calls Regional Water Authority an Assault Against Democracy and the Human Right to WaterCommunity calls for protection and representation for all region’s residentsDetroit, Mich. – The People’s Water Board decried Mayor Mike Duggan’s plan to create a regional water authority as undemocratic and a threat to the human right to water for many in the region. We have access to the largest body of surface freshwater in the world, so it would seem abundance and access should not be an issue. However the manner of governing this valuable resource as responsible environmental stewards for the world has left many communities without trust. The deal was negotiated behind closed doors without any input from the public and is the next step on the pathway to privatization. It takes away the rights of both the Detroit City Council and the citizens of Detroit to have input on big decisions impacting the system. “Suburban customers should not be fooled into thinking that this deal gives them more control or influence over the water system,” said Lynna Kaucheck of the People’s Water Board. “The new authority will be made up of unelected officials who are accountable to no one. People need to know that this deal doesn’t take privatization off the table.”Veolia Water North America, the largest private water company operating in the United States, has been hired to evaluate the management of the system and clearly has a vested interest in privatization. Privatization typically results in skyrocketing rates, decreased service quality and the loss of jobs. In fact, corporate profits, dividends and income taxes can add 20 to 30 percent to operation and maintenance costs, and a lack of competition and poor negotiation skills can leave local governments with expensive contracts. In the Great Lakes region, large private water companies charge more than twice as much as cities charge for household water service. This is not the solution for Detroit or the region.“The regionalization plan is unacceptable. We need a system that is accountable and transparent and that works for all its customers,” said Tawana Petty of the People’s Water Board. “We want an elected board of water commissioners. We want to reduce costs for the region through bulk purchasing and resource sharing. And we want to implement the Affordability Plan as passed by Detroit City Council in 2005. Detroit and suburban leaders need to protect residents and democratize the system.”The People’s Water Board advocates for access, protection, and conservation of water, and promotes awareness of the interconnectedness of all people and resources.The People’s Water Board includes: AFSCME Local 207, Baxter’s Beat Back the Bullies Brigade, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, Detroit Green Party, Detroit People’s Platform, Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management, East Michigan Environmental Action Council, Food & Water Watch, FLOW, Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit, Matrix Theater, Michigan Coalition for Human Rights, Michigan

Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute, Sierra Club, Sisters of Mercy, Voices for Earth Justice and We the People of Detroit.

on creation of regional water authoritypeople’s water board statement

wednesday, september 10, 2014 - permission to reprint

fight back plan

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“When it comes to peoples safety, money wins out of every time”

-Gil Scott Heron, “We Almost Lost Detroit”

I am a Detroiter. I grew up in the Warrendale neighbourhood, on the city’s westside. It is an enclave that sits at the intersection of Detroit’s majority African-American population and its thriving Arab-American community. These walls that separate residents of Detroit along racial and economic lines may soon be washed away and replaced by an even more primordial divide - access to water.

the water crisis in detroit is an american emergency

Since the 1967 race rebellions, Detroit has occupied the role of municipal pariah in the national media. It has become a cautionary tale, deployed to warn Americans about the horrors of crime and poverty, racial segregation and municipal bankruptcy.

As a result, national media has created a sense of collective pity for Detroit by illustrating “the post-apocalyptic hellhole” as an aberration, a blight on the map, cut off from the “prototypical” American experience. Much of the national coverage focusing on Detroit’s most recent trial - the water crisis - unsurprisingly flows in this direction.

Missing from the flood of stories about Detroit’s decline, abject poverty, and rustbelt apocalyptic narratives coming from outside the city is an indigenous story. A story about racial isolation, the politics of municipal shrinkage, a proud people fractured from the rest of their state and country, and a proliferating population of Americans denied the most fundamental human right: access to water. Until this crisis is reframed as an American human rights emergency, the same song of “money win[ing] out every time” will imminently jeopardise water access for Americans near and far from Detroit. Behind the water crisisThousands of Detroit residents are currently living without water. The Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) announced in March,

and subsequently commenced, plans to cut off water for “homes with delinquent bills” at a rate of 3,000 homes per week.

It recently tweeted, “If you’re stealing water, we’re coming after you”.

By summer’s end, it is projected that DWSD will cut off the water

services of 150,000 residents in total. Community

leaders believe that as many as

detroit’s water: behind the bankruptcy crisiswritten by khaled a beydoun, original publisher: al jazeera, july 27 2014, permission to reprint

300,000 Detroiters could be cut off from water access within a year.

These figures are staggering, particularly in light of the city’s diminishing population of 700,000 residents. Therefore, according to projections, as much as 45 percent of the city’s residents could be without water in the near future. Although a 15-day moratorium was enacted on July 21, the cutoffs will be sure to continue without federal intervention. ‘Pay your bills’“Pay your bills” has become a common refrain from this crisis. Yet, 38 percent of Detroiters live below the poverty line, unemployment and under-employment is pervasive, while the price of water has skyrocketed 120 percent in 10 years. A diminished public transportation system exacerbates poverty and spatial segregation, and limits residents from finding - and keeping - gainful employment beyond city limits.

The eastside of Detroit, which faces aggressive mass water cutoffs, highlights the cascade of challenges Detroit residents have to cope with while living without water. For the rapidly rising number of Detroiters cutoff from water on the city’s east end, purchasing water off the shelves is the only option.

Yet, there are no grocery stores on the eastside, gas stations and liquor stores hold geographic monopolies over essential products. Disconnected, spatially

segregated, and overwhelmingly poor, residents are compelled to consume what these businesses offer. With water becoming more scarce on merchant shelves, they have to live with little drinking, cooking and bathing water.

Living in an urban water desert, residents of the eastside are already facing price gouging by local businesses. Some have had to resort to stealing water from the few operable fire hydrants, homes, and neighbourhood businesses in order to survive water shortages.

New world waterIn spirit and statistics, Detroit is still a black city. African-Americans comprise 83 percent of the city’s population. Therefore, the vast majority of those affected by the water cutoffs, and the perils they create, are black Detroiters.

The acute and disproportionate impact on black residents may appear to be driven solely by economic factors.

However, a native testimony illuminates that racism, and a vision for the city based partly on racial reformation, pumps current water politics. The aggressive water cutoffs may be part of the broader plan to shrink the physical size of the city, and compel residents of under-populated and “undesirable” sections of the city, such as the eastside, to move.

The water crisis stops at 8 Mile - the iconised thoroughfare dividing black from white, wealthy from working class. Yet water still flows to many businesses located within

khaled a beydoun is the critical race studies teaching fellow at the ucla school of law

the city that generally serve white and middle class patrons.

Some of these businesses, including Detroit’s flagship golf course, Ford Field and Joe Louis Arena, home to the City’s NFL and NHL franchises, have not paid their water bills either, but they still receive water.

Not far from these golf courses and stadiums are sights of Black and Brown Detroiters walking down major avenues, carrying water tanks atop their shoulders. These images, generally associated with life in war-torn and “distant, disenfranchised lands”, are becoming more and more common in Detroit.

While largely framed as a symptom of Detroit’s impending death on the national media front, the water crisis is an unequivocally American emergency. Although residents of a city maligned as disconnected and deviant - Detroiters are still American citizens, guaranteed water provision by the United Nations and human rights law. Washington DC, while quick to respond to foreign concerns, has yet to act on Detroit.

Detroit, and its water crisis, is far closer than we all think. Therefore, pushing Washington DC to act in the interests of Detroiters living without water right now will create the basis for government action when residents of New York and California and elsewhere are also threatened by a water crisis.

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I had the honor of speaking to and performing for 500 students, instructors, activists and organizers from around the globe at the 4th Annual National Students for Justice in Palestine (#NSJP2014) Conference at Tufts University in Boston, Mass, October 24-26. I struggle with calling it a conference because it was unlike any organized gathering I had experienced to date. I learned to say the South African version of “Power to the People” through call “Amandla!” and response “Awethu,” witnessed the beautiful Palestinian dabke dance with several hundred people from across the globe and performed a poem dedicated to my beloved Detroit city, as others celebrated their home cities and countries. It was a deeply spiritual experience.

I was invited to Tufts to speak on the Environmental Justice panel focused on water. The delegations for this particular workshop represented Detroit,

Palestine and Hawaii. It was encouraging to see the groups of young people who were present for our talk, especially those representing SJPs across the globe, the Dream Defenders and Black Youth Project (BYP100), all of which are youth led organizations I have been following and whose work I admire.

The Hawaiian delegation spoke about the atrocities they were facing with regard to water and land insecurity, and the women who are paraded around for show with coconut bras on for touristic pleasure and the extreme militarism which keeps the natives muted and in check during the unwanted infiltration of their homeland. While listening to them, I couldn’t help but to think about the thriving Midttown — still Cass Corridor to me — back home, located smack in the middle of 120,000 proposed water shut-offs, 80,000 tax foreclosures, pension cuts, school closings and

demolitions, patrolled by private security teams and heavy police presence who have consistently shuffled away poor folks so that spectators and new, more acceptable residents could feel at ease. It was like we were kindred spirits in our struggles to maintain our dignity and humanity.

Our workshop was wrapped up by a Palestinian delegate who painted a vivid picture of the inhumane treatment of Palestinians who are also suffering from water and land insecurity in Israeli occupied Palestine. His weaving together of the Veolia water connection from Palestine to Detroit, which I had briefly referenced in my presentation was masterful. He went on to describe the transit discrimination Palestinians were facing, which is reminiscent of the transportation woes faced by Detroiters who not only have intentional limited access to suburban cities through our current transit system, but who

written by tawana petty, november 8 2014, permission to reprint

moving beyond solidarityTawana Petty, a.k.a. Honeycomb, is a mother, organizer, author, poet.

will soon watch a nearly $200 million dollar M-1 rail circle through their neighborhoods, fuel up and turn around, leaving them behind, as they await a public bus which may not come.

When you live in a predominately Black city where resources are nearly extinct for poor residents, you can’t help but to feel a sort of solidarity with other oppressed groups. However, this experience was unique. It was about moving beyond solidarity. It was about moving beyond borders. It was about transnational movement building which respects and uplifts the work of people who live in the oppressed communities, yet expands past social media profile pics and hashtags as referenced by Linda Tigani of Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). It was about recognizing when crisis jumping to communities who are already engaged in resisting their power structures, should come secondary to a peoples’ resistance to the power dynamics of their own communities. This un-conference provided a space for admitting to and struggling against anti-blackness in Arab communities, tackling rape culture on every level and waging love through the process. It was about respecting gender self-identity and listening with our hearts and spirits. It was about refraining from falling back into our respective bubbles and collectively creating alternatives together.

I was pleased to hear about the successful Derail

Veolia campaign waged by Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movements in Palestine, as Detroiters continue to face the threat of an insidious Veolia undertaking. Listening to the BDS stories solidified my view that the people have the final say.

I returned home with a strengthened resolve to bridge the gaps between organizers across borders while building towards self-determination and creating alternatives for my community and communities who are on the ground building towards a just society in Palestine, Hawaii, South Africa, Ferguson, India, and beyond. Folks at NSJP2014 were clear that resistance takes on many forms, including creating something new, which was refreshing to hear coming off the heels of the New Work New Culture Conference.

October 24-26, 2014 was a redefining moment for me, a silver lining to the cloud which had been hovering over my spirit. When you are constantly on the front lines of a particular battle, it can be difficult to see your battle through the eyes of others. It can be difficult to erase the lines that divide you. I look forward to continuing a meaningful build with the millennials who have chosen to take on the difficult task of humanizing this country.

Thank you Kristian Bailey for inviting me to grow my soul, and for reintroducing me to my humanity.

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Palestine

art by maia brown

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The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and its worldwide partners are celebrating the withdrawal of the huge French corporation Veolia from the Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR), an illegal rail system built to facilitate the growth and expansion of Israeli colonial settlements on occupied Palestinian territory.

The sale of its stake in the JLR project ends all of Veolia’s involvement in the Israeli market, including all projects that violate international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people.

The sale follows an extensive 7-year boycott campaign against Veolia, due to its complicity in the Israeli occupation, which cost it tenders around the world estimated to be worth over $20 billion.

Veolia sold nearly all of its business operations in Israel in April 2015 but had until now remained a 5% shareholder in the JLR project. On Thursday

bds marks another victory as veolia sells off all israeli operations

by the palestinian bds national committee

evening, the human rights research group Who Profits reported that Veolia

had liquidated its 5% share in the JLR project.

Under BDS pressure, Veolia has failed to win massive contracts with local authorities across

Europe, the US and Kuwait. City councils across Europe have passed resolutions excluding the firm

from tenders due to its involvement in Israeli human rights violations.

Following Israel’s massacre in

Gaza in the summer of 2014, for instance, Kuwait’s city council excluded Veolia from a tender for the

treatment of solid waste worth $750 million.Veolia executives have admitted that the campaign

has cost the company “important contracts”, and

art by leah knopf

financial analysts have repeatedly spoken about the financial cost of the campaign to Veolia.

By the end of 2013, Veolia’s investment rating was reduced to “junk” status as a result of its reported massive debt of over $20 billion – almost equal to the total value of tenders lost by Veolia by then.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) General Coordinator, Mahmoud Nawajaa, described Veolia’s complete withdrawal from illegal Israeli projects as a victory for all human rights campaigners who have pressured the company:

“Strategic and dedicated campaigning by the BDS movement has forced one of Europe’s biggest companies to abandon the Israeli market.”

“Veolia’s withdrawal from Israel sets an example to all companies that are complicit in Israel’s human rights violations. This is a victory for the BDS movement and all our partners from other rights movements who have helped in pressuring the company.”

Nawajaa added, “We call for legal action, by specialized

organizations, against Veolia to compel it to pay reparations to the Palestinian communities adversely affected by its infringements of international law.”

The JLR is considered one of the most infamous colonial Israeli attempts to normalize and strengthen Israel’s hold on occupied East Jerusalem and tie the city’s settlements even more firmly into the state of Israel. The United Nations Human Rights Council considered the project a service to Israel’s illegal colonies in the OPT. Veolia’s involvement in it, among other similarly illegal Israeli operations, had rendered the company complicit in Israel’s violations of international law.

The BDS campaign against Veolia was launched in Bilbao, the Basque region, in November 2008, to pressure the company to end its involvement in Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights.

In 2007, French solidarity group AFPS and the Palestine Liberation Organization took the company to court in France to compel it to end its complicity in Israel’s violations of

international law.As well as its involvement in

the JLR, Veolia had also been targeted for its role in waste, water and bus services for illegal Israeli settlements. Veolia transferred control of these projects to other companies as the campaign pressure on it mounted.

Riya Hassan, the BNC’s Europe coordinator, said, “Veolia is still a target for union activists, environmentalists and anti-privatization campaigners, due to its record of anti-labour policies and involvement in the privatization of public water. All those still being affected by Veolia’s policies and struggling for accountability and reparations can continue to count on our solidarity. The BDS movement takes cross-struggle solidarity to heart.”

See more at: http://www.bdsmovement.net/2015/veolia-sells-israel- businesses-targeted-by-bds-13081#sthash.nYMwMrcq.dpuf

art by wizdom of high gods

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16 November 2012

Dear NLWA members,

I am writing to you in my capacity as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 to urge you not to select Veolia for public contracts due to its active involvement in Israel’s grave violations of international law.

On October 25, I presented a report to the United Nations General Assembly on the legal responsibility of business enterprises, corporations and non-State actors involved in activities relating to Israel’s settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.1 The report concluded that corporations and non-State actors play an instrumental role in Israel’s belligerent occupation of Palestinian territory and the infringements on the human rights of Palestinians and that public authorities and civil society must take actions to hold complicit corporations to account.

Due to its deep and ongoing complicity with Israeli violations of international law and the strength of concern of Palestinian, European and Israeli civil society about the role played by Veolia, I decided to select Veolia as one of the case studies to include in my report. I have attached the report for your consideration.

Veolia has a 5 per cent share in the CityPass consortium, through its subsidiary Connex Israel, which was contracted by Israel to operate the light rail project in Jerusalem. The light rail is designed to connect the city of Jerusalem with Israel’s illegal settlements. Veolia owns approximately 80 per cent of Connex Jerusalem, the company that operates the trains. Furthermore, through its subsidiary company, the Israeli Veolia group, Veolia owns and operates the Tovlan landfill in the Jordan Valley of the occupied Palestinian territory. The Tovlan landfill is used to dump Israeli waste from both within Israel and Israeli settlements. Veolia furthermore operates buses linking Modi’in and Jerusalem via road 443 and thereby servicing the Israeli settlements of Giv’at Ze’ev and Mevo Horon. All these activities directly contribute to flagrant violations of international law.

The UN and the overwhelming majority of its members have consistently condemned Israel’s settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory as illegal under international law (Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 governing belligerent occupation) and as a formidable obstacle to peace, yet Israel continues with their expansion. The United Nations Office for the

Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has documented how the existence and continued expansion of illegal settlements have a severe humanitarian impact on Palestinian civilians, including with respect to house demolitions,1: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=43376#.UJ-8rYVY4Xw

killings and injuries of Palestinian civilians and restrictions of movement that affect Palestinians, but not Israeli settlers.

Veolia is a signatory to the UN Global Compact, a set of principles regarding business conduct. Yet its wide ranging and active involvement in Israel’s settlement regime and persistent failure to exercise due diligence show utter disregard for the human rights related principles of the Global Compact.

One of the key recommendations of my report is to urge states to implement the new UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. These Guiding Principles suggest as good practice that state authorities consider “denying or withdrawing existing public support or services” to companies that fail to address their involvement in serious human rights recommendations.2

I was therefore heartened to learn that a UK government minister has confirmed that UK legislation allows public authorities to exclude companies involved with Israel’s illegal settlements from tender exercises.3

Indeed, I agree with the increasing number of experts in international law that argue that any decision by the NLWA to provide access to public funds to Veolia may contravene the UK’s international legal obligation not to facilitate Israeli violations of international law.

It is my view that Veolia’s violations of the UN Global Compact principles and its deep and protracted complicity with grave breaches of international law make it an inappropriate partner for any public institution, especially as a provider of public services.

As I conclude in my recent report, the failure to bring Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory to an end after more than 45 years creates an augmented international responsibility to uphold the human rights of the Palestinian people, who in practice live without the protection of the rule of law.

I urge you to follow the example set by public authorities and European banks that have chosen to disassociate themselves from Veolia and take the just and principled decision not to award Veolia any public service contracts. Such a measure would contribute to upholding the rule of law and advancing peace based on justice.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Falk

United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967

*North London Waste Authority does not award tenders to Veolia*2: http://www.business-humanrights.org/media/documents/ruggie/ruggie-guiding-principles-21-mar-2011.pdf3: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm120523/text/120523w0004.htm#12052384000139

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In the past decade, the Dump Veolia campaign has been taken up in many countries in Europe. Activists have used different strategies to hold Veolia to account for its complicity in Israel’s violations of international law. For example, the campaign has called on investors to divest from Veolia, it has pressurized local authorities and institutions, including universities, to do no business with Veolia. It further requested organizations not to accept sponsor money which allows Veolia

to whitewash its activities linked to the illegal

settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Electronic Intifada regularly reports about the Dump Veolia campaign. Here follows a summary of recent activities in Europe.

FranceActivists from the BDS campaign in France protested against the French multinational Veolia Environnement and Israeli water company Mekorot at the World Water Forum in Paris last April. Both companies are involved in Israel’s violations of rights of the Palestinian people. Veolia Water was one of the corporate

sponsors of the water summit. BDS France further informed

me about local campaigns to call on local authorities to do no business with Veolia. Where possible, the campaign teams up with citizens who fight against water privatization. Veolia is the largest water privatization business in the world.

In addition, BDS France sent a letter to the director of the progressive newspaper l’Humanité with the request not to accept Veolia as a sponsor of the newspaper’s large yearly outdoor event with music, discussions and exhibitions.

overview of current activities in europeWRITTEN BY adri nieuwhof

FinlandThe Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) Finland is pressurizing the city council of Helsinki to end their business with Veolia for the company’s role in Israel’s activities in illegal settlements in the occupied West bank. A motion not to make any new contracts with Veolia and to end existing contracts insofar possible was submitted by 13 city council members. The motion referred to EU procurement laws which make is possible to exclude from bidding economical operators that have committed grave misconduct.

In response to the motion, Helsinki Regional Transport argued that the branches of Veolia that operate in Finland and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories were considered to be separate entities. Veolia has used this argument on many occasions. However, Veolia comprises a single entity and profits and prospers as such. An independent legal opinion on Veolia’s corporate structure exposed that for example Veolia’s branch in the UK is under the control of the parent company Veolia Environnement, which in turn has control of its Israeli subsidiaries that have been

committing, and continue to commit, acts of grave misconduct. Veolia Environnement bears responsibility for these acts and as a single entity the whole company, including its subsidiaries, shares this responsibility, according to the lawyers.

The city council did not follow the advice of Helsinki Regional Transport to reject the motion, but decided to return the motion for further evaluation.

More information about ICAHD Finland’s ongoing Veolia campaign can be found here. The statement gives an excellent overview of arguments for a boycott of and divestment from Veolia.

The NetherlandsThe Dutch Collective Citizens against Veolia unites several organizations and concerned citizens. The group informs local authorities about Veolia’s role in Israeli projects in the occupied West Bank and the responsibility of local authorities to respect international law. The collective staged a protest in the province of Zeeland and former Dutch ambassador Jan Wijenberg addressed a meeting of the members of the provincial parliament. The contract with Veolia was extended with three

years, but the press release of the collective gained vast media attention. We should not forget that an important aim of the BDS campaign is to educate the public about Israel’s violations of rights of Palestinians. Media attention is essential to reach out to a wide audience.

The outcome of the campaign of the collective against Veolia in the province Limburg is not clear yet.

United KingdomThe Dump Veolia Campaign in the UK continues to pressurize local authorities to stop doing business or not enter into new contracts. Recently, Veolia Out of Royal Parks Alliance (Vorpal) submitted a substantial argument to The Royal Parks, the manager of eight prestigious London’s parks as to why Veolia should not be awarded maintenance contracts over its role in Israel’s violations of international law. The submission was supported by scores of signatures from “the great and good,” states the campaign on its website.

Veolia was bidding for St James’s Park and rebidding for Regent’s Park. In both cases Veolia was not awarded the contract and Dump Veolia Campaign claimed a victory.

Adri Nieuwhof is a human rights advocate based in Switzerland and contributor to The Electronic Intifada.

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united statesJune 2007, New England Conference of the United Methodist Church’s Divestment Task Force identified Veolia along with a list of other companies as a recommendation for divestment.

June 2010, TIAA-CREF divestment campaign was launched in the United States. The campaign includes a petition calling for divestment from five major companies involved in the occupation, including Veolia, and currently holds around 24,000 signatures.

September 2012, The Quaker Friends Fiduciary Corporation (FFC) has divested from Veolia Environnement due to concerns about the company’s involvement in the Israeli occupation.

January 2013, Veolia withdraws from water contract bidding valued at $325 million in Yolo County, California.

November 2013, Veolia withdraws itself from consideration for a contract in St. Louis worth well over $250,000 after a resolution is passed that would remove funds allocated for Veolia in the city’s budget.

January 2014, Veolia loses Massachusetts commuter rail contract to competitor after 10 years of operation, following a public campaign highlighting the company’s poor performance and human rights violations in Palestine. Contract worth is estimated at $4.26 Billion.

globalJune 2009, Veolia has lost $7 billion worth of contracts since the beginning of the campaign and considered abandoning the Jerusalem Light Rail project.

October 2010, Veolia signed a principle agreement to sell its shares in the Jerusalem Light Rail to the Israeli transportation cooperative Egged. Veolia will transfer shares to Egged over a five-year period.

December 2010, The monitoring network Banktrack noted that financial investment in Veolia is “risky” because of its illegal activities in the OPT.

United KingdomJanuary 2012, The National

Union of Students expressed its support for campaigns calling on

UK universities to abolish their relationship with Veolia and Eden Springs

for their involvement in the occupation. February 2012, Jeremy Corbyn, MP (Member of

Parliament) calls for economic operators aiding and abetting the building, maintenance,

or servicing of illegal Israeli settlements to be excluded from public contracts

in the EU. His Early Day Motion is signed by 76 other MPs.

March 2012, Veolia loses a substantial contract in East Sussex for waste collection, recycling, street and beach

cleaning for Eastbourne, Hastings, Rother, and Wealden Council.

August 2012, Veolia has been excluded from contract to build and operate an

incinerator/waste treatment facility serving North Wales. The contract is part of the North

Wales Residual Waste Treatment Project and includes the Flintshire, Conwy, Denbighshire, Isle of Anglesey, and Gwynedd county councils.

May 2013, Sheffield University decided not to renew a waste collection contract worth £2m with Veolia.

switzerlandAugust 2008, The Swiss Alternative Bank (ABS) acknowledged that

Veolia did not meet their new criteria for investment, and expected

Bank Sarasin to influence Veolia to withdraw from the tramway project or to sell its shares in Veolia.

australiaJune 2009, Veolia

Transport failed to win the contract for the Melbourne light

rail transit.

spainNovember 2008,

A Veolia campaign is launched in front of the Bilbao city hall in

response to Bilbao’s awarding of a bus contract to the company.

scotlandDecember 2010, Veolia lost contract to

privatize public services for garbage collection and street cleaning in Edinburgh.

IranJune 2009, City of Tehran announced that Veolia would be excluded from bidding for key contracts for the city’s transportation services.

walesJune 2010, Swansea City Council passed a resolution to exclude Veolia from all future contracts because of its activities in the OPT. These contracts are worth about £1bn per year.

November 2010, The Caerphilly County Borough Council in Wales passed a motion to exclude Veolia from any future contracts or renewal of contracts because of its breaches of international law.

veolia & its history of contract

losses

IrelandAugust 2006, Veolia cancelled its contract with the Irish Trade Union to train Israeli drivers and engineers on the Dublin Luas tram (nearly identical to the illegal tramway being built in Jerusalem).February 2009, Sligo City Council passed a motion not to renew any further contracts with Veolia because of its activities in the OPT. April 2009, Galway City Council voted (12 to 2 in favour) not to renew or enter into any contracts with Veolia (who had operated underground system).May 2010, Dublin City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling on the City Manager not to renew any contracts with Veolia (Luas tram) and exclude all new contracts (metro)October 2010, Cork City Council voted to not sign or renew contracts with Veolia.

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englandMarch 2009, Sandwell City Council rejected the candidacy of a contract to Veolia garbage collection and recycling of 1.4 billion pounds. Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council excluded Veolia from Waste Improvement Plan (worth about $1.5 billion over 20 years).

February 2011, Richmond Council did not renew its street-cleaning contract with Veolia, worth £12m.

February/March 2011, Tower Hamlets town council voted to breakdown any existing or future relationship with Veolia because of its activities in the OPT.

March 2011, Portsmouth City Council chose another bidder over Veolia for its rubbish collection contract. Contract worth £20m.

April 2011, Veolia is removed from selection for waste treatment infrastructure of £1 billion in South London.

May 2011, Veolia lost the new joint East Hants/Winchester City contract for rubbish collection (Hampshire) worth £30m.

May 2011, The Transport and Salaried Staff Association (TSSA) passed a motion demanding no new contracts with Veolia.

June 2011, The GMB, a general trade union, called on Veolia to stop giving succour to colonialist occupation.

December 2011, Veolia lost contract valued at £485 million covering 1.4 million inhabitants of the West London boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Richmond-upon-Thames, for treatment of residual domestic waste.

October 2012, Veolia Environment has failed to obtain an 8-year, £40 million contract with Canterbury City Council. The bid instead went to Serco, the current holder.

December 2012, Veolia pulls out of North London Waste Authority contract (worth £4.7 billion) tender process.

franceOctober 2007, AFPS with PLO took Veolia Transport and Alstom to court, invoking French civil code. A French court in Nanterre rejected the two companies claims that it had no jurisdiction in the case and reaffirmed the illegality of Israeli colonies in East Jerusalem etc.

April 2009, Greater Bordeaux local government announced that the contract for the biggest urban network in France was awarded to Veolia’s competitor (worth $1 billion).

November 2010, Veolia loses bid to renew contract to operate the metro, bus and tramway lines in Lille, worth €1.2 billion.

January 2013, The Rennes City Council voted to not renew a contract with Veolia for management of their water.

swedenJanuary 2009, Stockholm county council announced end of 10 year-long Stockholm county metro/subway contract with Veolia, which would have been worth €3.5 billion over the next 8 years.

December 2010, Annual Report of Ethical Council of the Swedish National Pension Funds (AP1, AP2, AP3, AP4) added Veolia to their watchlist of companies involved in the occupation.

March 2011, The Board of Ethics of the 4 major Swedish national pension funds AP1, 2,3,4 called on Veolia and Alstom to end their involvement in the tram project linking Jerusalem to the OPT.

NetherlandsNovember 2006, The ASN Bank announced that it would end its relationship with Veolia Transport, and all companies that benefit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.February 2008, The Dutch Triodos Bank announced that Veolia and Alstom did not meet its criteria for investment. The Bank will not invest in Veolia, among other companies, because of its involvement in the occupation.November 2010, The largest Dutch pension fund, PFZW (€97 billion) engaged with Veolia over its human rights abuses.October 2012, The Board of Utrecht Regional (BRU) granted a ten-year contract for tram and bus transportation in the city and region of Utrecht to Qbuzz, replacing the former operator, Connexxion. Connexxion was taken over by Veolia in 2011.May 2012, Veolia is not awarded a public transportation contract for all bus transport in The Hague’s city district.

Marc, an engineer for customer services and a Veolia employee for twenty years, has lost his job for refusing to cut off the water to families who could not pay.

Marc was fired in April of 2013 from Veolia Eau (Veolia Water) in the town of Avignon--his dismissal letter cited his “refusal to implement the cut-offs following the non-payment of bills.” Basta! online reported that Marc refused to cut off water from close to one thousand households between 2006 and 2013. A Veolia spokesperson on France TV info responded: “His job description included closing water pipes and we are a company that has rules. You can’t choose which tasks you want to do.”

Instead of turning the water off, Marc attempted to find alternate payment plans for families, and often ‘forgot’ to cut off services if bills went unpaid. He repeatedly asked for a different position in the company arguing that the emotional strain was too much.

In an interview with Europe1 radio Marc explained: “I saw people who had nothing, living with their children, who begged me not to cut off the water supply and to give them a little more time to pay up…It could happen to anyone. You have to make a choice - either feed the children or pay the bills. These big companies pocket the money and redistribute it to their shareholders, without looking after their clients or employees. It’s scandalous.”

Management at Veolia have consistently argued that the homes where Marc refused to turn off the tap were not families in need, but just irresponsible, “habitual non-payers.” In an interview with France Bleu, Marc responded, “Sometimes when I arrive at someone’s home there’s nothing there. The fridge is empty and they have children.” His colleagues recall him saying “we’re no longer there to carry out a social service, now it’s just for the money.”

1: McPartland, Ben. “Fired for Refusing to Cut Off Poor Families’ Water.” The Local: France’s News in English, http://www.thelocal.fr/20130419/sacked-for-refusing-to-cut-off-poor-families-water2: Chapelle, Sophie. “Mobilisation pour l’employé de Veolia qui refusait de couper l’eau.” Basta! http://www.bastamag.net/Avignon-mobilisation-pour-l3: McPartland, Ben.4: “Trouble brewing – Sacked for refusing to cut off the water for destitute families.” Le Monde, http://bigbrowser.blog.lemonde.fr/2014/01/16/eau-dans-le-gaz-licencie-pour-avoir-refuse-de-couper-leau-a-des-familles-demunies/

veolia employee stops cutting off the waterresistance from withinwritten by maia brown

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Seattle

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statement by dorian taylor on accessI’m a chair user, but I won’t ride Access.

Having Access run by Veolia is asking disabled folks to support the system that is directly disabling people. That’s fucked up.

All of these colonialist systems and these imperialistic systems disable you. Like prison is disabling. Institutions are disabling. War is disabling. Living in poverty is disabling. It is important to look at all of the ways that we are directly and indirectly supporting these systems.

Before I heard horror stories about what the Access service is actually like, I didn’t want to use it because I knew that it was run by Veolia and that Veolia is one of the main profiteers of Israeli apartheid.

When you think of the system of Israeli apartheid, the physical disabilities caused by military occupation, also

PTSD, nightmares, it’s all physical actually and it all breaks you down, disables you. All of these things are directly related. All of the institutions are directly related.

I know people personally with physical disabilities from Israeli apartheid so that alone is enough for me to not want to support anything that is financing it. I don’t wanna give my money, any little piece of money, to a system that I believe directly or indirectly caused maybe not my condition per se but a disabled condition in other people.

I lost my ability to walk through forced psychiatric medication, being institutionalized as a child since the age of 8 and forced into institutions, that in itself is disabling. But now I really see the disabling role of institutions and how disability justice really needs to be a part of every struggle if we are going to achieve liberation.

It might be a little different to think about using Access if Access was exclusively a state program,

and this public service wasn’t being privatized by a company that profits from Israeli apartheid. It’s a bit fucked up to think about these interconnections like this, but it’s true, that’s how I feel. True, the state is also a disabling system, but our public dollars should support public services like transportation for folks with disabilities and the elderly.

So not wanting to support Israeli apartheid was one of my key reasons of not wanting to support Access. But then when I found out how unreliable Access transportation is, I was like uh uh, absolutely no way. The system is disrespectful.

Access does not even make sense from a capitalist perspective. You’ve got two hours, there’s a two-hour window on either side of your appointment. So you have a two-hour appointment that can be a six-hour trip for something that is 30 minutes away or ten minutes away. But what service in a capitalist sense makes sense

dorian taylor on access and solidarity in our movements

In Seattle, Veolia has the contract for Metro Access bus service for disabled folks and the elderly.

to pay for if you’re gonna have to wait two hours?

As disabled people we’re supposed to be grateful for anything we get. So I’m supposed to be grateful that there’s this service that’s available but not reliable?

You have poor people who are second-class citizens and then you’ve got disabled people who are second-class citizens to able-bodied poor people. So you’ve got this other class that really is supposed to be appreciative of everything that society does for us. We’re supposed to be appreciative of having this door-to-door transportation that takes longer to get from point A to point B than the bus?

Not to mention if they’re early. My final decision not to use Access was my friend telling me about Access showing up early while he was on the toilet and they still left him and I was like naw, naw, I’m not going to support that, I’m done.

Interview with Dorian Taylor on integrating disability justice into our movements for racial and economic justiceWhen Stop Veolia Seattle first came together, one of the group’s initial goals was to use this campaign as an opportunity to practice centralizing disability justice in our movement building work. Access users have been upset with many aspects of the system for some time and service has only deteriorated since Veolia took over in 2008. It is important that whatever system we organize to bring about works well for folks with disabilities and the elderly. It was clear to us that we should be following the leadership of folks most directly impacted and learning how to structure our meetings and events – along with our communication outside of meetings – in a way that is accessible and actively creates space to support the leadership of folks with disabilities.

But so far, we have failed. The following is an excerpt from a casual conversation between friends

that Dorian and I decided to record and transcribe as a contribution towards learning to centralize disability justice in our organizing for social and environmental change.

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Dorian Taylor: Most people don’t seriously think about including disability justice in their activism.

But all of these colonialist systems and these imperialistic systems, disable you. Like prison is disabling, institutions are disabling, war is disabling, living in poverty is disabling, so why wouldn’t you want to include disability justice in your movement? Susan Koppelman: Right and even this campaign, one of the central points was to include disability justice, and then like one of the things we keep finding is folks have a lot of nerve pain—DT: Well, yeah! To get us all in one room, that’s a challenge. Ya know! It is a challenge. But there’s, ya know, there’s Skype. There’s teleconference. We don’t all have to be physically in the same room

to be in the same room. We’re smart enough as human beings. If we can put somebody in outer space, we can figure out how to create access. It just requires a little extra thought, a little extra thinking, but as human beings we’re smart enough to do it.SK: Yeah. I mean my experience though is like if, I mean like yes definitely Skype will eliminate a lot of barriers, but sometimes just pain is pain—DT: And you can’t even do that.SK: Yeah, you just can’t do anything.DT: That’s true. And I don’t even have a Skype account by the way. So, yeah! That is definitely true. Um, but, you could also record it and somebody could give their input after the fact on their own time.SK: Yeah.DT: You know.

I spend a lot of my life in the bed, I spend a lot of my life bed-ridden, less now then in the past years, and, there’s a lot of fucking cool shit you can do from your bed and it’s not to be discredited.

I think as activists in activist communities people often think of direct action as like your physical body being there and they don’t think of like online activism, um um, as direct action. But it totally can be.

I’ve been a part of online movements and have seen things change. Just putting your voice out there can be a catalyst, face-to-face conversations, and I think that as activists it’s like you need to take a step back and look at the privilege that goes into just being able to rely on your body on a regular day-to-day basis.

Even the way capitalism works is still engrained in a lot of our

minds as activists because we still judge ourselves by how much that we can do and that we can push ourselves to do all of these things till our body drops you know but that that’s like capitalism, that’s a capitalist mindset.

Even though there’s no money involved, it’s still a capitalist frame of mind to like push yourself way beyond your limits, your physical limits, and that’s not okay either.

It can be done you know, [getting outside of our capitalist mindset and being inclusive of folks with disabilities]. There’s some people that can’t use computers because of their sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, you know, um, that might only be able to show up directly. So there’s many different factors that go into disability justice.

It’s even written in the ADA that nobody pays attention to,

but it’s even written in the ADA that if you don’t know what accommodations somebody needs just ask.SK: Mmm.DT: Like that’s actually federal law. SK: Huh.DT: There’s nothing radical about communication. SK: Right.DT: Ya know! It’s just something that we should do. But because it’s considered like you know people still think of disability and accommodations as special privilege. People don’t think of accommodations, like they don’t think that it’s necessary to accommodate just for one person. But when you refuse to accommodate just for one person you’re basically telling somebody they’re not wanted in your community. That’s exactly what you’re telling them.

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French multinational corporation Veolia is the largest privatizer of water in the world and the largest privatizer of transportation in North America, with appalling labor practices and a long list of human rights violations, including profiteering off of inflated water prices and Israeli apartheid. In King County, Veolia Transportation Services has been contracted to operate Metro Access paratransit service for folks with disabilities and the elderly since 2008.

Successful campaigns against Veolia on account of its human rights and labor violations have cost the company more than $20 billion in lost contracts – an amount comparable to its debt load, which caused Fitch and Moody’s to downgrade its credit ratings in recent years.

In order to distance its corporate logo from its corporate debt, Veolia has engaged in several restructuring and rebranding efforts throughout the years. Most recently, Veolia Environnement entered into a joint venture with French financial institution Caisse des Dépôts to consolidate all of its transportation contracts within a new company that would be 50% owned by the French bank. A March 3, 2011 press release marks the completion of the restructuring in France and the creation of a new company Veolia Transdev, now simply called Transdev.1

In a July 15, 2014 letter to King County Department of Transportation in Washington State, Veolia Transportation wrote: “Veolia Transportation will

pressure mounts on executive constantine to take action on veolia

be going through a name change and rebranding process… Starting in mid-August of 2014, our parent company’s name, Transdev, will become our name. There are no other changes—no changes in ownership, in management, or in any other aspect of our operations.”

But the name change of the subsidiary from Veolia Transportation Services Inc, a Maryland company, to Transdev Services Inc, undeniably represents a change in ownership.

Veolia Transportation Services changed its name from that of a subsidiary wholly owned by Veolia Environnement to that of a new subsidiary wholly owned by Transdev, which is presently only 50% owned by Veolia Environnement and 50% owned by a French financial institution. This is a change that King County and all entities contracting with Veolia Transportation Services need to know about.

If it is recognized that Transdev Services is a new entity, this suggests that when Veolia Transportation Services ceased to exist, all of its contracts should have been reopened to a public bidding process.

Initial investigation seems to suggest that Veolia’s claim that Transdev was its parent company is false as well.

written by susan koppelman, originally printed in the south seattle emerald

1: Veolia Environment and Caisse des Dépôts “announce the creation of Veolia Transdev today, the result of the combination of their respective subsidiaries, Veolia Transport and Transdev.” The press release is clear that Veolia

Transdev is a new company that is the result of a merger, and that “Veolia Trans-dev is owned jointly by Veolia Environnement and the Caisse des Dépôts.” Veolia Transdev has since changed its name to Transdev to reflect Veolia’s planned departure from the field of transportation entirely. The Transdev that is jointly owned by Veolia Group today represents an entirely new entity than the Transdev that was wholly owned by Caisse des Dépôts, which preceded it.

Veolia Transportation Services, Inc, as stated in its contract with King County was a “wholly owned subsidiary of Veolia Environnement”. At no point between the initial contract signing with the county and the July 15, 2014 letter did Veolia Transportation ever issue the county documentation that its parent company had changed.

What does this mean for King County, WA?

In 2008 Veolia caused a huge upset to the King County labor community. Veolia replaced a long-time union-represented subcontractor, leading 140 union-represented employees to lose their jobs or take pay cuts. The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587 had just negotiated new contracts the previous year to increase the wage cap from

$19.90 to $23 over the course of 4 years. Under Veolia, these victories were rolled back, with Metro

Access drivers’ wages capped at $18 since 2008.

According to a July 30, 2008 article in the Seattle Times, “Metro’s general manager, Kevin Desmond, estimated there would be a $1 million annual savings” from the switch to Veolia. But for the last four years, the County has paid at least $7 million more per year than the amount that was to represent $1 million in annual savings.

How could this happen? Local activists are still looking into why Metro agreed to a number of changes to the initial contract, including such a spike in costs. Other contract changes cut training hours in half and reduced vehicle maintenance to save $179,091. All of this was decided without reinstating previous pay scales.

Significantly, the contract change that added $212 million

to the contract over seven years was signed after French Veolia subsidiary Veolia Transport had already ceased to exist. So, while Veolia claimed that it was getting out of the transportation sector entirely, it was nonetheless moving aggressively to renew and transfer transportation contracts held by its former subsidiaries abroad to Transdev. First it put off reporting on the merger in France for years; and then when it finally announced the merger years later to entities it was contracted with in the U.S., it falsely claimed, “same company, same leadership, same ownership – just a new name.”

It remains to be seen whether there is any legal recourse to punish Veolia for its fraudulent misrepresentation and overcharging of King County. Allegations of labor misconduct also need to be investigated.

This past March 1st, Seattle/King County residents were subject to fare increases for public transportation. Fare increases were double for Access users compared to bus fares for students, seniors or the general

population. In light of Veolia’s price gauging across sectors

globally, in many cases making access

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to water unaffordable for local populations, it is fair to ask the question whether Veolia may be behind the double fare increase for Access users in King County.

Too big to fail?This is not the first time that

Veolia has rebranded in order to escape its debt or its deteriorating reputation.

In 1996 over a third of the directors of the Executive board of Compagnie Générale des Eaux were under investigation for corruption and “misappropriation of public funds”, contributing to the 1998 name change to Vivendi. In 2002, in the shadow of CEO Jean-Marie Messier’s conviction for fraud, the company changed its name once again, this time to Veolia.

This also is not the first time that Veolia has been hostile to labor.

In 2012 in Arizona the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found Veolia guilty of “refusing to meet with the Union for purposes of negotiating a successor collective-bargaining agreement, engaging in regressive bargaining, and bargaining with no intent of reaching an agreement,” among many other practices that are illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. The same year the NLRB intervened to quash Veolia’s illegal anti-union tactics

in Las Vegas and Connecticut.

On March 5,

2015 a Boston jury took only ten minutes to dismiss Veolia’s frame-up charges against a local union leader; but the four union leaders Veolia fired in Boston are yet to be reinstated. (Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s Vendor contract with Veolia gives the City full and sole authority to settle all grievances – demand Mayor Walsh reinstate the fired USW leaders 8751 by contacting him at mayor@Boston.gov or 617-635-4500).

Veolia’s repeated lying and embezzlement from the public clearly demonstrate that the company’s allegiance is to its shareholders and not the communities it serves. Of course, this is one of the main problems with the privatization of public services.

At a time when the US Congress is trying to fast track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), it is crucial that the public understand how large corporations like Veolia are already getting away with highway robbery. Agreements like the TPP will only tip the scales further in favor of massively powerful corporations.

A 1996 case concerning “Argentine affiliate company Aquas del Aconquija, controlled in substance by [Veolia predecessor] Vivendi despite its separate legal personality,” offers us a cautionary tale of privatization and free trade agreements that supersede national sovereignty. When consumer groups in the

poor province of Tucuman, Argentina took legal action to halt the increase in water tariffs and a regulatory body ordered the company “to pay fines amounting to several million for water quality failures and contractual non-compliance,” Vivendi took the province to arbitration using the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). In 2010, concluding the longest running case before the ICSID, the court ultimately sided with Vivendi, despite its contractual noncompliance, determining that the company had a right to make a profit and awarding the company US$105 million in damages, an amount nearly equal to ten percent of the public debt of Tucuman province.

It is anticipated that the TPP will further entrench the right to profit for corporations like Veolia that exist solely to make profit. In order to protect our public services, it is essential that we stop corporations like Veolia when we learn about them, that we create mechanisms to hold powerful corporations and their CEOs accountable, and that we work to remunicipalize public services that have been subcontracted.

If Seattle/King County residents are successful in creating accountability mechanisms and challenging Veolia’s lies, this could set a precedent for Transdev contracts throughout the U.S.

At the very least, it’s a cautionary tale as to why we need to resist the privatization of our public services and the TPP.Opposing Veolia

In King County, the Transit Riders Union and Stop Veolia Seattle, in coalition with labor, anti-privatization, disability justice and Palestine solidarity groups, issued a letter to Councilmembers last year demanding that the County end the contract with Veolia. Reasons include Veolia’s poor service, low wages, erosion of labor protections, a 50% reduction in training hours and cut backs on vehicle maintenance, while adding $7 million in annual costs. The global context of Veolia’s profiteering from inflated water prices and Israeli apartheid is of additional concern.

Now activists are also insisting that King County hold Veolia to account for its fraudulent misrepresentation of its restructuring to the county.

In September 2014, the MLK County Labor Council – the local affiliate of the National AFL-

King County Executive Constantine may be reached at

206-263-9600 or kcexec@kingcounty.gov

Suggested talking points:I am concerned that the County is contracting with Veolia/Transdev, a foreign corporation with an abysmal global track record. Our local disability community and elderly deserve better.

Metro must answer for the $7 million annual budget increase. I join King County residents in demanding an audit of the contract.

I urge you to end this contract and to bring Access paratransit service in-house to protect these jobs.

CIO representing over 150 labor organizations and 75,000 workers – voted unanimously to pass a resolution to end the contract with Veolia, preclude Veolia from bidding on future contracts and to bring Metro Access in-house.

On March 18, Chair Larry Phillips of the King County Council sent a letter to King County Executive Dow Constantine signed by the five Democratic members of the nine-person council, urging the Executive to investigate “serious concerns for many aspects of ACCESS service, including rider experience, labor protections and wages, and potential cost overruns to our government.”

If you are concerned by Veolia’s profiteering off of our tax dollars while gutting this essential service for community members with disabilities and the elderly, let Executive Constantine know.

The contract is up for renewal in 2018, but Veolia and Transdev have some answering to do now. Susan Koppelman is a Seattle based mother and activist with Stop Veolia Seattle.

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veolia’s falsificationsStop Veolia Seattle (SVS) and the undersigned organizations urge the King County Council to 1) discontinue all contracts with Veolia, 2) preclude Veolia from obtaining any future contracts with the County, and to 3) bring Metro Access services in-house to be operated by the County.

Veolia, the French-based multinational corporation, formerly known as Vivendi, is the largest privatizer of water in the world, the largest privatizer of transportation in North America, and also involved in privatizing other public services such as trash collection and disposal. In more than 50 instances around the globe, cities and states have broken their contracts with Veolia because Veolia is not meeting the terms of its contracts. Costs have gone up while service has gone down, turning public investment into private profit. This track record has been opposed by the public since Veolia went by the name of Vivendi. As Vivendi, the corporation lost record numbers of contracts because costs were going up and services were deteriorating, posing serious risk to public health and safety. The commodification of public services and resources for profit have also led to policies and practices that break international law and infringe upon human rights globally. Unfortunately, in changing their name they didn’t also change their business practices. As Veolia, the corporation has lost an additional 24 billion dollars worth of contracts. It feels shameful that in Martin Luther King Jr. County our public taxpayer dollars are supporting a corporation with such a dismal global track record.

There are also grievances at home. Veolia has a history of union busting right here in Seattle, as well as in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Boston. Moreover, users of Metro Access report that the service has deteriorated under the authority of Veolia. Our disability community deserves much better.

Because of Veolia’s role in global structures of inequality, as one of the largest privatizers of public services in the world, SVS and the undersigned see Veolia as one window into understanding the larger interconnections of our struggles for economic and social justice both in our local communities and in solidarity with struggles for justice around the world.

SVS and the undersigned are committed to building relationships at the intersections of labor, disability justice, anti-corporatization, environmental justice, corporate accountability for human rights violations, and solidarity with the Global South.

Signed,BAYAN-NW, CISPES (Community in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador), CodePink - WA, Freedom Socialist Party (Seattle), JVP-Seattle (Jewish Voice for Peace), No New Jim Crow Seattle Campaign, Puget Sound Chapter of Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME), QuAIA (Queers Against lsraeli Apartheid), Rising Tide - Seattle, SUPER UW (Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights), The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, Transit Riders Union, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR), WISH (Washington lncarceration Stops Here )

stop veolia seattle call to king county council

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In this age of austerity, working and poor people have been made to pay for the under-funding of public transit again and again. Transit riders pay when service is cut, when fares go up, and when regressive taxes are raised to fill the gap. Bus drivers pay when they are forced into contract concessions, find their working conditions deteriorating, or lose their jobs to private contractors. As bus riders, we understand the importance of standing up for the rights of our drivers. We understand the importance of solidarity. Without the labor movement there would be no stable jobs and no foundation for stable families, neighborhoods, and communities.

A few years ago, King County extended their contract with the private corporation Veolia to operate most of their Access fleet. This is not acceptable. We will not stand by and watch as stable, family-supporting union jobs are replaced with poorly paid, precarious jobs. Furthermore, Metro drivers appreciate their responsibility in providing a vital public service. Underpaid and poorly treated Veolia drivers cannot be expected to provide the same standard of care. The Transit Riders Union supports Stop Veolia Seattle’s demand that King County terminate its contract with Veolia and restore these jobs to union drivers.

TRU, Yasmin Elbaradie

transitriders.org

transit riders union

BAYAN Pacific Northwest stands in strong solidarity with people around the world fighting against multi-national corporations attempting to privatize basic needs, like access to water and sanitation services. We are in full support of the Stop Veolia Seattle Campaign advocating that King County cease its contract with Veolia to operate the Metro Access program, a transportation service for disabled and elderly residents.

BAYAN Pacific Northwest is a strong supporter of the United Nations Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights affirmation that access to water is a condition for the enjoyment of the right to an adequate standard of living and inextricably related to the right to the highest attainable standard of health and therefore a human right. We affirm the belief that access to water is a human right and should not be a profit-generating commodity. However, Veolia is the largest privatizer of water in the world, which includes water and sewage contracts in Manila, Philippines.

This corporation is also complicit in the continuing oppression of communities across Palestine and Israel. From their illicit subsidiaries supporting illegal settlements on Palestinian land to normalizing Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands through transportation contracts, Veolia is a giant octopus of corruption whose tentacles of profit opportunistically squirm into the crevices of developing countries across the world.

This company makes millions in profits off privatizing basic needs, occupation, and segregation.

In addition, Veolia has a long history of union-busting and hostility to its workers’ collective right to organize. This includes King County’s Metro Access program, despite King County Metro transit operators’ long history of union representation. In severing union contracts and paying workers below that of union wages, Veolia once again demonstrates their priorities of profit over people.

We join Filipino Americans and allies globally in resisting Veolia’s attempts to profit from water and sanitation, to profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, to profit by eliminating living wage union jobs.

From Seattle to the Philippines, no to privatization! No to contracts with Veolia!

BAYAN-NW, Joaquin Uy

bayanusapnw.wordpress.com

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The 75% of Access drivers with Veolia/Transdev have not been unionized since King County canceled the successorship contract with MV Transport in 2008 and accepted Veolia’s low-bid to save $1 million off the backs of Access drivers. In 2009 Metro approved an additional $1 million in annual costs to Veolia, in 2010 an additional $4 million annually, and since 2011 Metro has approved a total $7.3 million annual cost increase to Veolia since 2008 while workers conditions suffer.

When Veolia came into being a provider, drivers used to have what we call start times that a person comes to work everyday. For instance, a driver gets a chance to have what we call picks, just like metro, you can say what days off you want and what time of work you want, or what time of day you want to start work. So it was generally done like 7 o’clock, then 7:15, there’s a 7:30 start, a 7:45, in 15-minute intervals, from 7 o’clock all the

way up to 12 midnight there were start times in increments of 15 minutes. So a driver would come in and say he’d look at what we call a packet, a packet might be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday you work, and you start at 3:45 each day, ten hours, and then you’re off Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

When Veolia came into the game it all changed. Now you have what we call a floating time. You come and say well I’m picking to work at 3:45 so then guess what you might start at 4:45 so there’s an hour swing on everybody’s time so you never know when you’re going to be working. Your lunch isn’t going to be the same every day, or your getting off of work isn’t going to be the same every day. You have to call in every day to see if you’re even going to work. And if your name isn’t on the list, you don’t go to work.

And right now they just started because of Metro, this break thing, they just started putting

in places to take breaks, so that’s the newest thing that they’ve done, but the dirt is still there.

Someone came around to observe us one day and asked us how things were and we said fix the scheduling, the scheduling isn’t right. The drivers aren’t getting breaks. We’re getting stressed here.

Some of the drivers even have to go put on those things you know so they don’t wet their seats, some of them are putting depends on so they don’t wet their seats. That’s a sad thing to hear. I tell folks you know there’s nothing that supercedes that kind of stuff. So the same things that are happening with metro drivers are happening with paratransit and even more so with paratransit because if you have a person on board and that person would be called a hand-to-hand or a person who cannot be left alone then you’re not supposed to get out of your vehicle and leave that person by themselves and go do anything

solid ground, access driver & member of atu local 587 on veoliaanonymous, access driver for 8+ years, interviewed and transcribed by susan koppelman away from the van, you’re

supposed to keep your eyes on the vehicle wherever you are outside the vehicle at all times if somebody is on the vehicle. And so it happens when people don’t know how to play the game, they don’t know what to do and they wet themselves and stuff of that nature. That’s something that’s not advertised too much but it really happens.

So now with the latest from Metro that we’ll be getting actual breaks, not this stuff they were saying before about 3 mins at a stop light counting as part of a break – yeah Metro actually said that – now I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know how it’s going, how things are cleaning up, but there’s a lot of people who are unhappy. When you’re unhappy doing your work, your work doesn’t look very good.

The passengers are not lying. They’re getting abused. They got it now to where Metro has them where they just say if you don’t like the service ride some place else. And then they’ll tell the driver, look you either do it

the way I tell you to do it or I’ll find somebody else that will. So, what does that do?! I mean read between them lines. And then you say what the hell do I have to do here now? I mean do I have a voice? Yes, if you’re in the union you have a voice. You can say something.

Some of the people who ride the bus are saying “those kids down there at the call center [1] disrespect me when I call for a ride they talk to me like I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t like that very much.” And I say “oh”. This is what I hear riding the bus all of the time. And I say well you know things are supposed to be recorded down there for you. They complain, they complain and they complain. They say the few drivers that are union are the drivers they enjoy being with they can tell automatically, they know the difference, they can see the quality of a person’s concern and they say hey I know you’re from Solid Ground, you’re not Veolia. They know Veolia. They even call down and ask are they going to be picked up by Veolia.

That’s how crazy it is! Yeah, if I’m gonna get picked up by Veolia I’m gonna have to call my cousin! Or you know, I just don’t think I want to go. We do not encourage or say anything about another driver. We just hear and try to be sensitive to the thought and just continue on being professional.

Veolia says cameras on the dashboard are for safety, so why does it seem that the main focus is on the driver? Veolia purchased them and Metro says they didn’t have anything to do with it, but they are Metro vehicles.

As long as you pick the person up safe and bring them back safe that should be the most import thing of all. But Veolia is in the business of selling fear. They control us by making us constantly fearful of losing our jobs. We deserve a business model based on respect. The more our employer respects us drivers, the more respect drivers will be able to extend to the community members who use the Access service.

[1] The call center is run by private transportation corporation First Transit, second largest in the US next to Veolia/Transdev.

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hearing from access users

Lonnie Nelson, longtime Metro Access user, Transit Riders Union (TRU) member, and a lifelong activist, shared her experience of Access under Veolia in 2013 before her death in 2014.

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My name is Jacqueline R. Sorgen, I have been using Access now in excess of 8 years. Every 3 years you are required to go for reevaluation. Mine is due sometime I believe June 9th and I’m trying to move it up because sunshine hurts my eyes and I prefer doing this before the heavy sunshine of the summer.

Regarding Veolia, I have been there since before they came on board, and there’s a problem of a tremendous disconnect, because there is more than one company involved, and they don’t communicate well with others. I believe First Student does the scheduling and the drivers are with different organizations, Veolia and Solid Ground. I have noticed that the Veolia drivers are not as well trained or as experienced as the Solid Ground drivers, and also that there is a lot of paranoia because they are cutting back the hours and everything else of the Veolia drivers, and since

they are non-union they are very nervous.

susan koppelman: What do you know about the cutting back of the hours for Veolia drivers, what that’s connected to?

jacqueline sorgen: [The reduced hours are connected to] budget cuts. They just increased the fare by 40%. My monthly pass went up from $45 to $63, and I require a monthly pass because I’m a frequent flyer aboard Access, so I absolutely have to have one. It was hard enough for me to afford when it was $45, now that it’s $63 I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen.

The call center is actually run by First Student but they don’t communicate well.

sk: First transit?

js: No they call it First Student. It’s different.

sk: Interesting ok, I have to look into that more.

js: No, they call it First Student cuz it runs the student school bus line.And unfortunately they have not upgraded their computer in a long,

long time. So their drivers are totally overworked and overstressed, from both companies.

sk: Right that affects the Soild Ground drivers too. Now do you have some Solid Ground drivers in addition to Veolia drivers?

js: I have both. And then we always get the overflow periodically.

sk: How does that work?

js: They want to get you home and they don’t feel like having anybody do overtime, so they hire what they call the overflow. And the order of that is WAT, which is Washington Accessible Transit, then Sunshine, then Northwest Transit fourth, then Trans Pro, Trans Pro is their hail Mary.

sk: So there are drivers who are going to be laid off, but they’re still also deferring some of the service?

js: Yes, to alternative companies. Does that help? Am I explaining things well? I can’t even tell anymore.

sk: Oh yeah, you’re explaining very well! When you say that you’ve noticed that the Veolia drivers

interview with jacqueline sorgenapril 28, 2015, greenwood senior center

don’t appear to be trained as well, can you speak to that more?

js: I have to instruct the drivers on how to apply the seatbelt. Little things like that, you know.

sk: Are there other examples?

js: They also, Access as a whole, changes its rules without notifying anybody. But that is a systemic problem, not a Veolia problem.

sk: Right. So, it’s Metro then?

js: It’s a combination of everything.

sk: So like what kinds of policies?

js: Well, for instance, they will only wait 5 minutes period, if they pull up and you’re not there within the five mins that they pull up, you’ll have to find another way to get to where you’re going.

It’s not a new policy, they’re just enforcing it more rigorously than they used to. Because they’re working on tighter and tighter routes and scheduling, so that’s the way it is.

Sometimes you just can’t make it right there in 5 mins.

sk: In terms of how to fix Access going forward?

js: They need to start communicating among the companies. They have no idea what’s going on, they just do what they’re told. Some of the drivers are nice and will wait. And others, ‘well that’s what it says, I can’t wait.’

And the way it’s routed is ridiculous. I’ve gone home from UW and I live in North Seattle via Tukwila. Also Veolia shuts down it’s Shoreline base at 11 pm during the week, so meanwhile drivers will have to come from all of these other bases to cover Shoreline shutting down early.

They definitely need to improve their communication and try and treat their riders with some respect, okay, does that make sense?

sk: Yeah, for sure. Let’s see what we can do about it.

JS: I doubt much, but we can try, you know how that works.

SK: Actually I think if we can

bring the contract in-house, we might be able to in King County.If they’re bringing together Access users to..

js: They’re not. We don’t count. We really don’t which is why they figured they can get away with going up from $45 to $63 a month [for monthly Access passes]. Cuz we’re old, disabled, either senior or disabled disabled. We got the highest raise and that was ridiculous cuz we’re the brokest.

sk: As Stop Veolia Seattle, we want to use the power we’re generating coming together with the unions and different affected communities to all band together to get labor to band by the Access users’ goals of the campaign and for everyone who’s part of the campaign to have your back and amplify your voices.

JS: That’s a nice idea. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but you’re welcome to prove me wrong.

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WHEREAS French-based multinational corporation, Veolia, is one of the largest privatizers of public services in the world and holds the majority percentage of the contract for the operation of King County Metro Access buses; and

WHEREAS Veolia has a history of Union busting in Seattle in 2008, user dissatisfaction with Access service under its authority, and a dismal global track record of high costs and fees for poor service and infrastructure maintenance, low wages and cuts in benefits for workers, as well as violations of international law and human rights; and

WHEREAS MLKCLC has made a commitment nationally to make common cause with struggles for social justice and workers’ rights around the world, building global solidarity to strengthen worker and union power everywhere; and

WHEREAS MLKCLC knows that privatization undermines that effort and puts workers and users of public transport at risk; be it therefore

RESOLVED that MLKCLC supports ending all contracts with Veolia in King County, bringing all bus services in house, and precluding Veolia from bidding on any future contracts in King County; and be it further

RESOLVED that this resolution be sent to 1) Metro General Manager Kevin Desmond; 2) King County Executive Dow Constantine; and 3) All members of the King County Council.

on september 17, 2014 the mlk county labor council passed the following resolution against veolia introduced by atu local 587:

http://www.mlkclc.org/docs/Resolutions%202014%2Epdf

Locally SVS stands in solidarity with disabled folks, the elderly, and bus drivers – those who are most directly impacted by the cancellation of the contract with MV Transport and King County’s decision to contract with Veolia. At the same time we work in solidarity with Palestine, the global water justice community and with the Global South resisting neocolonial austerity measures and the privatization of essential public services.

As we do solidarity work in the context of struggles that are both local and global, we know that solidarity is not conditional. Bus driver solidarity with Palestine, for example, cannot be a prerequisite of our solidarity with their struggle for job security, better working conditions and improved wage / benefit packages.

Our objectives are local: to get rid of Veolia/Transdev, to bring the service in-house, and to improve the service to meet the needs of folks with disabilities and the elderly. Our hope is that these local goals contribute to global struggles for justice.

We hope that by being in solidarity with both local struggles and also global struggles we may expand and transform how solidarity is practiced, and develop ways of being in solidarity that are increasingly generative for liberation struggles both locally and globally.

“We are delighted by Veolia’s withdrawal from Israel and Occupied Palestine just as we were about to print this publication. We remain committed to supporting disabled and elderly users of the Access service as well as Access drivers.”

Stop Veolia Seattle (SVS) is a local intersectional campaign that is aligned with the movement for Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) of Israel until Israel ends its violations

of Palestinian human rights and international law.

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Dear County Executive Constantine and Councilmembers:The five (5) Councilmembers also may not realize that, in aligning themselves with the campaign of

misinformation by the ATU, they have also aligned themselves with the BDS movement, for which “Stop Veolia Seattle” is a local front organization. “Stop Veolia Seattle” is not a transit users group, but is part of the “Boycott, Divest and Sanction” movement or “BDS”, a coalition of anti-Israel activists that seek to undermine support in the U.S. and internationally for the nation of Israel. Its principal objective, in the words of Omar Barghouti, the BDS international founder and leader, is the “euthanization of Israel.” Formed in 2005 and now part of the anti-Israel lobby, BDS uses a strategy of systematic attacks on companies that do business in or with the nation of Israel or in any part of Palestine. It makes false and exaggerated claims about the goods or services these companies provide in order to call attention to its anti-Israel position.

Transdev (formerly a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement, a leading global provider of water, waste, and energy services) is among several companies, including McDonald’s, Costco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sara Lee, to name a few, who are targeted by BDS and local groups like “Stop Veolia Seattle.” According to BDS, Transdev’s alleged “war crime” is that a subsidiary of Transdev Group, our parent company, is the operator of a highly successful modern light rail system in the City of Jerusalem (the JLRT). Conceived in the optimism following the 2001 Oslo Accords, it transports more than 100,000 passengers a day, is open to people of all races, religions and nationalities, employs an equal number of Arabs and Jews in its operation, and serves all parts of that ancient city. It enjoys high approval ratings among both Israeli and Arab users, and ratings by Arab users alone are among the highest for any urban light rail system in the world.4 The JLRT is controversial with no one except those aligned with the BDS movement who call it unwanted infrastructure within “occupied territory.”

The ATU has recently joined with local BDS groups in certain locations where they share a common target. With strong support from ATU leadership in Washington, D.C., they are attempting to discredit companies that provide essential transit services to municipalities in the hope of converting employees to be public, instead of private sector employees. They oppose the involvement of the private sector in providing public transportation services nationwide, which today occurs in almost a third of the transit industry. We are the largest private sector operator of public transportation in North America with over 200 contracts with cities, airports and universities. We provide transportation expertise, technology systems and management services that help cities deliver efficient quality transit that

improves mobility and quality of life. These false attacks have been turned away in most every location they have been tried, but only after our efforts to educate those who have been misled by them.

Excerpted from a letter from Transdev dated April 6, 2015Re: March 18, 2015 Letter from Certain Councilmembers Attack on Transdev

Veolia/Transdev has attempted to divide our coalition because we call attention to their role in Israeli Apartheid.

Dear County Executive Constantine and Councilmembers,In a spurious effort to distract from its lackluster performance record, Transdev leveled unfounded

accusations against the ATU in its April 6, 2015 letter. Specifically, it alleged that ATU has partnered with a “front organization” for “anti-Israel activists” in its opposition to Transdev/Veolia. However, as you well know, coalitions by definition are made up of groups which may have divergent beliefs who join together on a particular issue. By entering into a coalition, members do not necessarily endorse each other’s full agendas. Instead, ATU’s association with “Stop Veolia Seattle” is because of our common interest in the effective functioning of the King County transit system. Although the Israel/Palestine conflict may be of interest to our allies, ATU has no involvement in that issue. Our sole focus is ensuring that the citizens of King County are provided with a fully-functional transit system and the well-paying jobs that go with it.

SVS and our partners refuse to allow Transdev or others to use the global outrage directed at Veolia/Transdev for its complicity with Israeli violations of international law through August 2015 as a way to somehow intimidate our elected officials into

dismissing its unfair labor practices, poor service and outright lies to King County.

ATU International President Larry Hanley responds directly to attempts to use a lack of understanding about BDS and the Palestinian liberation struggle to attack our local coalition.Excerpted from a reply dated April 14, 2015Re: April 6, 2015 Letter from Transdev

SVS is grateful to be working in close partnership with the Transit Riders Union, the MLK County Labor Council, ATU Local 587 and other local partners.

Join the effort to stop Veolia in Seattle: stopveoliaseattle@gmail.com

stopveoliaseattle.wordpress.com

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