CWA Mobilizes to Stop Privatization in Camden County

On July 7, CWA locals in Camden County, NJ, organized a rally with community allies to oppose a proposal to privatize the City of Camden’s 911 emergency call center operators. In addition to at least five CWA Locals, those in attendance included local leaders from the NAACP, the religious community, and immigration rights activists. If approved, the proposal would affect 25 police dispatchers who field emergency calls in the City of Camden.

“I’ve worked for the City of Camden for 14 years. This is a tough job.  We work long shifts in a very stressful environment where extra seconds mean lives are at stake,” said dispatcher and Local 1014 member Tonya Quarles. “We’re so understaffed we have vacation leave routinely denied.  I’ve stood with Camden through the good and the bad.  Now I want elected leaders of Camden to stand with me.”

Privatizing Camden’s dispatch services not only threatens to destroy the middle class jobs of 25 workers in order to seek minimal cost savings, it threatens public safety for residents and businesses of Camden.  Most CWA members in the call center have more than a decade of experience and many live in Camden.  They know the neighborhoods and have built relationships with police forces.  But the request for proposal the City Council put out in February would only require workers to have one year of experience in similar work.  A group of new workers with little experience who don’t know Camden could threaten what local leaders are calling “the Renaissance of Camden” by undermining safety of residents and trust of potential business owners.

CWAers in Camden fight back against privatization of 911 dispatchers & stand up 4 middle class jobs + public safety! pic.twitter.com/MRVpx41g3u

— CWA New Jersey (@CWA_NJ) July 7, 2015

To make matters worse, the request for proposals the City Council approved makes clear that the City would still be on the hook for all costs associated with running and maintaining the infrastructure of the 911 call center – meaning the entire savings of the proposal would come from cuts on the backs of workers and the elimination of collective bargaining rights. The protest was the latest in CWA-led efforts to develop a more robust progressive coalition in Camden. 

A year ago, three CWA locals who represent workers in Camden formed the Camden Coalition.  Consisting of unions and community allies, CWA has engaged the coalition in a number of actions, including a march in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, a forum with community members to begin developing solutions to the issues facing Camden, and a discussion about the modern Civil Rights movement with CWA staff representative and Freedom Rider Alan Kaufman, who spent more than a month in jail in Mississippi in the summer of 1961. The efforts to develop deep relationships in the community have already paid off: In February, members of the coalition joined CWA members at the City Council meeting to protest the first steps of the privatization scheme.  

“Our position is that this is not something that should even be explored,” said Karl Walko, President of Local 1014. “Even if there is small cost savings, the risk to the public and the destruction of public sector jobs makes this something the city should not even be looking at.”