Anniston, Alabama, is poised to serve as a model in the U.S. transition to a green economy, thanks to a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) negotiated by The Rockefeller Foundation grantee Jobs to Move America (JMA) and a coalition of community partners.
It paves the way for equitable job creation, ensuring that the transition to sustainable industry not only fosters community resilience but uplifts historically marginalized groups in the process.
The accord with New Flyer, an electric bus manufacturer and major Anniston employer, provides for initiatives like apprenticeships, health and safety training, and a commitment to hire at least 45 percent of new employees from among Black workers, women, veterans, and the formerly incarcerated. Additionally, 20 percent of promotions must go to individuals from these groups.
Employees at the New Flyer plant in Anniston, Alabama. (Photo Credit Meg Fosque)
This is a meaningful change for this city with a history of racial tension whose 21,000 residents are about 50 percent Black and 44 percent white.
Anniston, in east-central Alabama at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, played an important role in the civil rights movement, notably after a white mob firebombed a Greyhound bus carrying civil rights activists known as Freedom Riders in May 1961 and held the doors shut to trap the passengers. About a dozen people were injured, some seriously.
“The legacy of employment segregation is very real here, with higher-paying jobs largely occupied by white men,” said Alabama native Erica Iheme, JMA’s co-executive director.
Before negotiating the CBA, 91 percent of the New Flyer’s more than 600 employees were white men. Now, 64 percent of the new hires and 51 percent of promotions came from historically disadvantaged groups, Human Resources Director Terrance Sanders estimates.
Raytoya Armstrong, a mother of three, was working 12-hour shifts seven days a week. “I was devastated,” she said. “Working those hours leaves no time for your kids.” She hoped to join New Flyer since 2016. Under the CBA guidelines, she was recently hired as an assembler through an apprenticeship program.
Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su tours New Flyer Anniston clean energy bus factory and meets with production assembly workers, June 2024. (Photo Courtesy of JMA)
The CBA also recreated a pathway for employees to form a union. In May, workers signed a contract with the company that provides family-supporting wages, health benefits and paid time off, among other benefits.
Through the advocacy of JMA and others, the CHIPs & Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act incentivize companies to enter into CBAs with community, labor and environmental justice organizations.
“We believe that if we do things right, over time we can convince companies to do things they may not otherwise do,” said Madeline Janis, JMA’s co-executive director. The success at New Flyer gives her “an incredible sense of hope and possibility” for change, not just in Alabama but nationwide.
