
Community Benefits Snapshot: New Flyer Community Benefits Agreement
Highlights
The New Flyer Community Benefits Agreement, signed in 2022, is a legally binding contract between New Flyer, Jobs to Move America and Greater Birmingham Ministries. This is a multi-state agreement, impacting New Flyer’s facilities in Alabama and California. It supports the creation of good-quality manufacturing jobs through investments in workforce development and training programs, especially for historically disadvantaged people.
Context
- Project title: New Flyer
- Location: Ontario, California and Anniston, Alabama
- Sector: Public transit bus manufacturing
- Developer: New Flyer of America Inc.
- Project agreement type: Community benefits agreement
About the project and involved stakeholders: A community benefits agreement (CBA) was signed between New Flyer of America Inc., Greater Birmingham Ministries (GBM) and Jobs to Move America (JMA) on May 24, 2022. The New Flyer CBA supports the creation of a “robust jobs program through investments in pre-apprenticeship and training programs that create a jobs pipeline for low-income workers and historically disadvantaged people to quality manufacturing jobs with career advancement opportunities” in the manufacturing of public transit buses.
New Flyer is a Canadian multinational company that manufactures public transit buses, including zero-emissions buses, in North America. Founded in 2013, JMA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing a fair and prosperous economy with good jobs and healthier communities for all. GBM is a 501(c)(3) multifaith and multiracial organization, founded in 1969, to provide emergency services for people in need and to pursue a more just society for all people. In addition to JMA and GBM, 13 other organizations, including A Better Balance, Adelante Alabama Workers Center, Alabama NAACP, Alabama Arise, Alabama Forward, Alabama Rivers Alliance, AFL-CIO, Communications Workers of America (CWA), Greater-Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution, Hometown Action, United Auto Workers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and United Steelworkers, formed the Alabama Coalition for Community Benefits. These organizations participated in the CBA negotiations with New Flyer, though they did not sign on.
The CBA applies to New Flyer’s facilities in Ontario, California and Anniston, Alabama. The Ontario facility has been shut down since the CBA was signed. The agreement is in force for five years from when it was signed and can be extended by mutual agreement on an annual basis.
Engagement
Before the CBA was signed, JMA had a long history of engagement with New Flyer. As city agencies have transitioned their public transit fleets to zero- and low-emissions technology over the last decade, JMA has pushed for higher work standards in transit manufacturing and advocated for leveraging government funding of transit projects to create jobs and economic opportunities for disadvantaged communities. JMA developed a policy tool, the U.S. Employment Plan, which enables cities, states and public agencies to build good jobs and equity into their public purchasing processes by requiring companies competing for public contracts to provide information related to number, type and location of jobs to be created, salaries, benefits and training programs to be provided, and plans to recruit historically marginalized workers. According to a JMA interviewee, “JMA’s theory of change is based heavily on demanding more from companies that receive public money to advance the greater public good.”
In 2019, JMA sued New Flyer on grounds of failing to pay its workers as much as the company had promised as part of its proposal to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to produce up to 900 buses. When New Flyer won the contract in 2013, it had signed onto a U.S. Employment Plan pledging to create more than 50 full-time jobs above a certain pay rate at its Ontario facility. New Flyer denied these allegations.
Around the same time, JMA, CWA and its industrial division, IUE-CWA, and a coalition of faith and environmental groups in Alabama launched a campaign to highlight low wages and discriminatory working conditions in New Flyer’s Anniston facility. The coalition published a study, based on interviews with 100 Anniston facility workers, which found a $3.14-per-hour pay gap between white and Black workers. The study also found that Black workers were denied promotion opportunities and more likely to get hurt on the job. CWA members from New Flyer’s unionized Minnesota facility attended the American Public Transportation Association conference to raise awareness about the study and share their stories about how having a union gave them a voice on the job. New Flyer employees also testified before local transit boards that were considering giving contracts to New Flyer about their work conditions and the company’s impact on their lives and communities.
New Flyer denied allegations of pay inequality and racism. In 2020, the company published its own version of a “Community Benefits Framework” in partnership with the Transportation Diversity Council (TDC) to facilitate agreements with transit agencies and partners focused on local community needs. Under this framework, agreements would be managed and monitored by New Flyer’s workforce development manager and reported to the TDC and company leadership on a quarterly basis. According to a JMA interviewee, New Flyer’s Community Benefits Framework is separate from the CBA negotiated between the company and JMA and GBM. New Flyer did not engage with JMA and its coalition in creating this framework.
This was also happening at a time when transit agencies were set to receive billions from the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Biden administration was incorporating job quality and racial equity as priorities in federal spending. In 2022, New Flyer settled its LA Metro lawsuit for $7 million and agreed to negotiate a multi-state CBA covering factories in Alabama and California.
Separate from the CBA, New Flyer agreed to a neutrality agreement with CWA to voluntarily recognize unions that formed at its facilities. The path to securing the neutrality agreement was eased by JMA’s multi-year campaign to add job standards to public contracts for electric bus procurement.
Benefits
Several of New Flyer’s CBA benefits relate to workforce provisions and include the following:
- Select 45% of new hires and 20% of promotions at each plant from historically disadvantaged groups that have typically had limited access to good-quality jobs in U.S. manufacturing. Historically disadvantaged groups are defined to include Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, women, LGBTQ+ persons, formerly incarcerated people, persons emancipated from the foster care system, veterans and residents of Anniston, Alabama, lacking GED or high school diploma. New Flyer committed to collaborate with JMA and GBM to do outreach, recruitment and placement of individuals from historically disadvantaged groups into these jobs. In particular, to facilitate the entry of veterans into manufacturing jobs, New Flyer, JMA and GBM plan to collaborate with the Center for Military Recruitment, Assessment, and Veterans Employment, as well as maintain a database of veterans interested in working for New Flyer. The CBA also includes a “ban-the-box” commitment by New Flyer to not ask about an applicant’s criminal history before an offer of employment is made.
- Develop a pre-apprenticeship program to prepare workers for employment at New Flyer. The training curriculum includes life skills, language and mathematical literacy and techniques for working as a team. Those who are hired are to be provided mentoring so that they can succeed in an industrial work environment.
- Develop a technical training program consisting of both classroom and hands-on training. When recruiting workers for this program, New Flyer will give preference to those who have completed the pre-apprenticeship program. The CBA notes that the goal is to register the technical training program as an apprenticeship program with the U.S. Department of Labor, as well as the California Department of Industrial Relations in the case of the Ontario plant.
- Create a discrimination and harassment complaint system with a designated community organization (DCO) in each plant that will assist employees in filing and resolving complaints about perceived discrimination and harassment. The DCO in the Anniston plant is the Alabama State Chapter of the NAACP. Workers filing a complaint can stay in the job while they seek resolution and are protected from retaliation.
- Conduct semi-annual workplace safety training sessions at each plant. Sessions will be run by a nonprofit organization agreed upon by parties to the CBA. Employees that complete the training obtain OSHA 10 authorization cards, which identify them as worker safety experts in their workplace.
In addition to the workforce-related benefits, the CBA allows JMA and GBM to host semi-annual debt clinics on site at the Anniston plant, which offer free legal assistance with debt-related issues. Finally, New Flyer is working with JMA and GBM to address gaps in public transportation for both the Anniston and Ontario plants through the use of shuttles, ride-share and other services.
Oversight and Enforcement
New Flyer is required to track its efforts to meet hiring and promotion goals and disclose the data to JMA, GBM, and the rest of the coalition members on a quarterly basis. The parties to the agreement meet quarterly to evaluate compliance of the commitments included in the CBA. More than two years after it was signed, the CBA is having an impact. There has been increased hiring and promotion of workers from historically disadvantaged groups, with the company recruiting more workers through direct hire than through staffing agencies and delaying background checks until after a job offer has been made.
The CBA defines explicit dispute resolution mechanisms, including non-binding mediation and binding arbitration. The parties to the agreement can jointly select a mediator from JAMS: Mediation, Arbitration and ADR Services, the world’s largest private alternative dispute resolution provider. The cost of the mediation is to be shared equally among all the parties of the CBA. Before proceeding to binding arbitration, the complaining party must send a written complaint and representatives from both sides must meet to discuss the issue.
Strengths of New Flyer CBA
Featured on the U.S. Department of Labor’s website and identified by researchers as meeting the essential characteristics of a successful CBA, the New Flyer CBA is often highlighted as an example of a successful CBA. A JMA interviewee even said, “New Flyer is well on its way to being one of the best employers in east Alabama.”
JMA had significant CBA experience prior to entering negotiations with New Flyer. JMA had successfully negotiated CBAs with two other electric bus manufacturers: BYD Motors in 2017 and Proterra in 2020. Furthermore, Madeline Janis, the executive director of JMA, has significant experience developing CBAs dating back to the 1990s. Drawing from its considerable expertise in negotiating and implementing CBAs, JMA launched a Community Benefits Agreement Resource Center in 2024 to support the development of robust CBAs in the manufacturing sector.
JMA built a diverse coalition that focused on a common goal of securing good jobs for manufacturing workers. Alabama was ground zero for coalition building. Patricia Todd, former Alabama State Representative and current Southern Policy Manager for JMA, is deeply embedded in local communities across the state and played a key role in building the coalition based on her relationships. The broad-based coalition included unions and environmental, faith, and civil rights organizations. Though these organizations are not signatories to the CBA, they played an important role during the negotiations and now in monitoring the implementation. According to a JMA staff member, representatives from these organizations met monthly and had visioning sessions about what should be in the CBA.
JMA’s partnership with labor was key to New Flyer signing a neutrality agreement with CWA. While not a part of the CBA, the multi-year campaign by JMA and CWA led to a separate agreement between New Flyer and CWA where the company pledged to be neutral during union organizing at all of its locations and refrain from union-busting tactics. In May 2024, a significant milestone was reached when workers in the Anniston facility — in a region that has been traditionally anti-union — successfully unionized and ratified their first union contract, which includes raises between 15% and 38% by 2026, cost-of-living adjustments and enhanced retirement benefits. The campaign at the Anniston facility was supported by New Flyer workers in the Minnesota facility which has been unionized for over 20 years—a goal that JMA is now pursuing in the South where much of the recent investments in green energy technologies have flowed.
JMA and its coalition partners held significant leverage that brought New Flyer to the negotiating table. As allegations related to job creation, pay inequity, racism and sexism began to come out, JMA and its partners built a compelling narrative by working with researchers at Alabama A&M University to publish a study which helped organize and garner support from a broad coalition. While denying all wrongdoing, New Flyer agreed to negotiate a CBA with JMA and its partners.
The CBA includes strong monitoring, accountability and enforceability provisions. To create accountability, the CBA includes robust monitoring and reporting provisions to measure progress against goals in an ongoing manner. While enforcement of the CBA hasn’t been an issue so far, the agreement includes clear and detailed language to track implementation. For instance, a JMA interviewee shared that they “negotiated back and forth extensively over the definition of historically disadvantaged people” to find the “sweet spot between [the definition] being too targeted and broad enough to include a diverse group of justice-impacted people.” Given that Alabama’s communities of color are heavily over-policed and over-criminalized, JMA and its partners were keen for the definition to include not just Black workers in Anniston but also formerly incarcerated individuals.
Challenges and Gaps of New Flyer CBA
Organizations without significant resources and the national presence of JMA may find it challenging to replicate JMA’s success. JMA is a national organization with significant presence in multiple states and a lot of experience building effective labor-environmental alliances. While the New Flyer CBA provides insights for future CBAs, it is not a replicable model for other organizations with limited resources and without JMA’s national profile. It is also rare that other organizations would have the opportunity to use an existing legal challenge to bolster the case for a CBA because legal cases are costly to initiate.
- New Flyer CBA
- JMA Community Benefits Agreement Resource Center
- Community Benefits Tools and California Clean Energy Projects (Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, University of California Berkeley)