Linda Nguyen-Perez, a research/policy analyst at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), works to promote America's manufacturing jobs and create career pathways for historically disadvantaged women and men, and Michelle Knapik is the director of the Surdna Foundation’s Sustainable Environments Program. This is a cross-post from The Huffington Post.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (aka L.A. Metro) needed new, clean buses. If L.A. Metro had simply followed current buying protocol, its single focus would have been on finding a company to deliver the lowest-cost buses. In all likelihood, this would have resulted in jobs going overseas (but for some final assembly jobs on U.S. soil).

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan may be spending a lot of time on bus tours between now and Election Day, but their proposals for the nation’s transit systems would leave millions waiting for a ride. A new website RomneyWrecksTheBus.com from the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD) outlines just how ugly a wreck Romney’s proposed 46% cut in federal transit funding would cause.  

The U.S. House yesterday removed a major roadblock to a long-term reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Act when it approved (293-127) funding for highways, roads, bridges and transit systems through Sept. 30.

More than 2,000 members of Transport Workers (TWU) Local 100, who keep New York City’s subway and bus system up and running, recently headed to Albany for a day of lobbying state lawmakers on vital transportation and working family issues.

Tomorrow, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) around the nation will join in the National Day of Action for Public Transportation organized by Occupy Boston. ATU President Larry Hanley says public transportation is critical to our nation’s economic recovery.

A new report sheds light on how the shrinking middle class can be tied to a growing decline of America’s roads, bridges, transit systems and energy grids—because "high levels of economic inequality have distorted our democratic process."

This is a cross-post from Chaz Bolte of the We Party Blog.

The city of Los Angeles and its mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, have been leading the national push for Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) to help create jobs for local workers. This trend continued last Thursday as the city and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced that PLAs have been entered into to ensure that 40 percent of the work hours performed on most MTA projects moving forward will be done by people who live in economically disadvantaged communities.