'No' to Con Ed's 17-percent rate hike

People who live and work in Queens, New York City’s most international borough and its largest in area, gave a resounding “No” to Con Edison’s request for a 17-percent rate hike—its largest ever—at a Jan. 17 public hearing. Many who spoke out were mobilized by the Western Queens Power for the People Campaign (PFP).

Transport worker and unionist Charles Jenkins, speaks against the Con Ed rate hike. WW photo: Mary Owen

PFP has been fighting for justice and restitution from a nine-day Con Ed power outage in July 2006 that plunged over 200,000 people into darkness in mainly working class, immigrant communities. Since then, people have been killed or seriously injured in a July 2007 Con Ed steam pipe explosion in Manhattan and a November 2007 Con Ed gas explosion in Sunnyside, Queens.

“Con Ed should be held accountable for what they’ve done, and a rate increase is not the way to do it,” said Madelene DeLeon, a PFP organizer who works on the block where the steam explosion occurred. DeLeon also lives a block from where a gas explosion killed Sunnyside resident Kunta Oza, 69, in her home on Nov. 21.

Others who spoke said that Con Ed takes in $12 billion a year and has $25 billion in assets, and stockholders and top managers should use that for the $1.2 billion in increases they’re trying to squeeze out of customers.

“Workers are limited to raises of 3 percent or 4 percent, but my Con Ed bill has become outrageous. We the people are looking for justice. Any rate hike is a tax on working people,” transport worker Charles Jenkins, a vice-president of the New York City Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, told the state Public Service Commission (PSC).

PFP organizers handed in 100 letters from community residents and small business owners opposing the Con Ed rate hike. Local elected officials also spoke and condemned the requested increase. But a week earlier on his radio show, billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared to endorse the hike saying the utility giant, which bills customers the highest rates in the U.S., “does not make that much money.”

The state PSC is expected to make its final decision on the citywide rate hike by March 30. Readers who would like to sign a letter to say “No” to the increase can go to www.powerforthepeople.info.