Alabama Workers Organizing with IUE-CWA

Hundreds of workers at a New Flyer bus manufacturing plant in Anniston, Ala., are organizing for a voice at work. With IUE-CWA and Jobs to Move America, workers are fighting for union representation and bargaining rights that will give them the same opportunities as union workers building identical New Flyer buses in Minnesota.

As members of CWA Local 7304, Minnesota assemblers earn as much as $5 more per hour than their Alabama counterparts. Minnesota welders’ wages are twice as much as those of Alabama welders. Minnesota workers also have clear guidelines for addressing safety issues, forced overtime, unfair discipline and favoritism on the job.

Rebecca Lyn Getto, an Anniston worker responsible for inside paintwork on all buses, is mobilizing her coworkers because she receives less pay than men who paint the outside of the buses. “I’ve been excluded from paint and buffing classes that would allow me to advance, and I can’t help but wonder if this is because of my gender,” she said.

Dustin Patterson became a union activist because he used to earn $15.32 an hour as a welder before the company abruptly transferred him to assembly and cut his pay to $12.36 an hour. “After nine years of dedicated service, with never a write-up and above average reviews, I felt I was owed an answer. I waited weeks for a requested meeting with Human Resources and when it came, the HR manager told me the door here swings both ways. My immediate supervisor and my co-workers recognize the value of my work. Yet I am being penalized $500 a month for nothing I did wrong,” he said.

New Flyer acquired the Anniston plant in 2013 after it purchased North American Bus Industries. The first built-from-scratch New Flyer Xcelsio bus rolled off the assembly line two years later.

Today, workers are building electric buses, paving the way for green public transportation in cities nationwide. Orders have been coming in nonstop, and since November, workers have been building about 13 buses a week. That includes the first ever North American designed and built zero-emission 60-foot battery-electric/fuel cell bus.

IUE-CWA organizers started meeting with the Anniston workers in late 2015.

Gabe Harrell, a basic assembler, got involved for his 11-year-old daughter. After working six years in Anniston – with zero raises – he earns $12.60 an hour. There have been weeks where he only had $40 to buy groceries, and Harrell constantly worries if his stretched finances will hurt his daughter’s future. 

“It’s not workers biting the hand that feeds them. If we’re succeeding, everyone in the business should be succeeding as well,” he said. “The union is the one thing that can give us more democratic power. This is the way for things to change for the better.”