"Jobs to Move America supports the switch to electric buses, not just because of reduced carbon emissions and independence from fossil fuels, but also the negative impacts of diesel buses on occupational and societal health."
President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan unveiled Wednesday calls for boosting workers and organized labor, including by overhauling federal labor law to make it easier for workers to form unions and negotiate the terms of their work.
Iheme, the community organizer, said Amazon workers deserve to have enough energy to function outside of work. If warehouse employees aren't "exhausted when they get off work," or running off to a second job to make ends meet, they can be better parents. They might also get involved in the community and even take vacations to other parts of the state, she added, all of which would be good for Bessemer and the state's economy. "When you have that time to invest in your home," she said, "you have that time to invest in your community."
The city’s purchase of hundreds of yellow buses could jump-start what has been a slow effort to add electric vehicles to the diesel-guzzling school-bus fleet, advocates argue in a new report.
A survey of about 100 workers at the NFI plant by Emily Erickson, a professor at Alabama A&M University, found that white workers earned about $3 an hour more than Black workers on average.
A research team at Alabama A&M University in Huntsville released a grim report on the experiences workers are facing at manufacturing plants in Anniston and Calhoun County.
Research shows workers reported earning below living wage, unpredictable schedules and forced overtime, unsafe working conditions, racial and gender discrimination.
Big companies benefit at the expense of their employees and surrounding communities, researchers at Alabama A&M say.
The president’s support for the rights of unionizing Amazon workers delighted political organizers in Alabama who are hoping to build long-term Democratic momentum in a reliably red state.
"President Biden has repeatedly pitched a massive infrastructure spending plan as a way to create good jobs and address systemic racial inequities. But the president will never be able to achieve those goals as long as the government prohibits using federal dollars to encourage targeted local hiring," writes the LA Times Editorial Board.
