Making Our Transit Dollars Go The Distance

Making Our Transit
Dollars Go The Distance
Who Are We?
Jobs to Move America is a national
coalition uniting more than 50
community, faith, labor, and civil
rights organizations to maximize
the value of U.S. tax dollars spent
on public transit investments. Jobs
to Move America works to create:
• More and better U.S. jobs
• Strong apprenticeship and
training programs
• Career opportunities for
people facing barriers to
employment and groups
that have historically been
underrepresented in the transit
industry, such as women,
people of color, veterans, and
formerly incarcerated people
Ruby Diaz is a quality control technician at a Kinkisharyo railcar factory in Los Angeles County. Jobs like
hers were created as a result of Los Angeles Metro including the USEP in their 2012 Request For Proposals
for light-rail vehicles. Photo credit: Deanne Fitzmaurice
What’s at Stake?
Our Solution
Our Successes
Every year, U.S. transit agencies
spend approximately $5 billion
taxpayer dollars on buses and
trains produced by global transit
manufacturing companies.
For decades, companies have
used our tax dollars to create
jobs abroad. This spending has
the potential to support up to
30,000 good U.S. jobs (according
to the Political Economy Research
Institute at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst). With cities
struggling with unemployment,
underemployment, and poverty,
we can not afford to miss this
opportunity to create good U.S.
jobs with our public dollars.
Jobs to Move America has
developed an innovative policy,
the U.S. Employment Plan (USEP),
that enables local communities and
transit agencies to leverage our
public transit investments to create
good U.S. jobs.
The USEP has been adopted
by several of the largest transit
agencies in the U.S., including:
• Amtrak
• Chicago Transit Authority
• Los Angeles County
Metropolitan Transportation
Authority
Our policy provides manufacturers
with incentives to generate
high-quality U.S. jobs, career
pathways for people facing barriers
to employment, and training
opportunities. The USEP has been
legally vetted by the Department
of Transportation and may now
be included as a component of an
agency’s Request for Proposals.
The inclusion of the USEP in these
bus and rail purchases is expected
to support more good U.S. jobs,
robust training programs, and entry
points for people facing barriers to
employment. We are also working
with other communities and major
U.S. transit agencies to encourage
incorporation of the USEP.
Together, we can make our transit dollars go the distance!
California
Rudy Gonzalves
[email protected]
Illinois
Linda Nguyen
[email protected]
www.jobstomoveamerica.org
New York
Malika Conner
[email protected]