"We are calling on President Joe Biden to fully lift the federal ban on local hiring for federally funded projects. This will allow cities to use those federal dollars to create local jobs – and help us, as mayors, make our regions more prosperous and sustainable for all."
Christy Veeder, national program director, speaks to the societal and economic benefits of electric buses and the possibility of Biden's infrastructure plan.
Mo-Yain Tham, a senior researcher at Jobs to Move America, said the CCIA will create 160,000 jobs. “There’s massive potential to transform our economy," Tham said "The CCIA assures these jobs will be quality jobs contributing to a green economy.”
How the infrastructure bill could easily be engineered to also build justice.
The Department of Transportation is aiming to reinstate a program the Trump administration scrapped that would allow local hiring requirements to be added to federally funded infrastructure projects.
In this op-ed, John Costa (ATU) and Sonal Jessel (WE ACT for Environmental Justice) draw on Jobs to Move America's research to show how electrifying our school buses can create good jobs, healthier communities, and advance equity.
"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.
