In June 2023 Nova Bus, announced it would close its manufacturing plant in Plattsburgh by 2025. In November 2024, MicroBird, a manufacturer of small and medium-sized school and transport buses, announced it would move into the plant. Production began this summer.
Senator Minority Leader Charles Schumer said he personally intervened to urge Nova Bus, a division of Volvo, to sell the plant.
“Originally, Nova didn’t want to sell the plant because they didn’t want competitors. It gave them an advantage, but it was mean. So I called Volvo’s top leadership and said – ‘find a new owner’ and we found MicroBird! They’ve invested close to $40 million in this new plant. They are protecting good paying jobs and I went and met some of the workers. They are skilled and diligent and they also seem happy because the company treats them nicely.”
This was Schumer’s first visit to MicroBird since it began operations. After a private tour of the facility, he praised the region’s newest transportation manufacturer.
“They have over 300 employees and when they started they thought it would be about 210. They’ve got a lot of back orders coming in and they have some certain things we need legislatively but this is good news for workers – present workers and future workers. Clinton County has long been the heart of an American transportation manufacturing. Why? We have great infrastructure, a topnotch workforce. Companies across the world want to build their buses, trains and cars here.”
The senator was impressed with the efficiency of MicroBird’s assembly line.
“It’s station-by-station and they very skillfully have laid out who puts what and does what. And the fact that each one is just 74 minutes is really brilliant.”
MicroBird hopes to expand production next year to include low or no emission buses. Schumer says he is working to boost funding for the U.S. Transportation Department’s low- and no-emission vehicle grant program.
“We have a budget coming up. As minority leader I have a lot of say in that budget and this is one of my priorities. And I boosted this program in the bipartisan infrastructure bill. But that’s going to expire soon and so we need to make sure that there’s robust funding for the future and we need to put more money into this program.”
Senator Schumer was in Massena earlier in the day where he announced new legislation that would repeal cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – or SNAP. Schumer’s office says the entire Democratic caucus is co-sponsoring the bill.
