MTA's subway car RFP includes provision to encourage U.S. job creation

[Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:20 a.m. CDT.]

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) request for proposals (RFP) for the purchase of 1,025 new subway cars features a "U.S. employment plan," which includes incentives aimed at encouraging manufacturers to create jobs, advocacy group Jobs to Move America (JMA) announced yesterday.

Developed by JMA, the plan also is aimed at creating a "career pipeline" for low-income and communities of color. Including the plan in the proposal could help support more than 33,000 United States-based jobs, JMA officials said in a press release.

"Adopting this plan, which includes a jobs disclosure and evaluation tool for the purchase of these trains, will not only improve New York's transit system, it will also create good jobs and revive manufacturing in our communities that need it the most," said JMA Deputy Director Linda Nguyen.

The U.S. employment plan has three parts: a disclosure, which asks companies to detail the number and quality of U.S. jobs on a contract; evaluation, which provides a scoring method for transit agencies to evaluate competing proposals from manufacturing companies; and implementation, which legally obligates companies to implement their proposed employment plan.

MTA will spend $3.2 billion on the new cars, according to JMA.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week announced MTA's plan to purchase the new subway cars as part of the agency's $27 billion, five-year capital program.

JMA is a national coalition comprising more than 30 community, labor, faith, civil rights, philanthropic, academic and environmental groups.