Employment Creation through Green Locomotive Manufacturing at Wabtec’s Erie, Pennsylvania Facility

By Gregor Semieniuk and Robert Pollin - Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), April 2023

This report estimates the prospects for job creation through expanding green locomotive manufacturing at the Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies (Wabtec) Corporation’s Lawrence Park facility in Erie, Pennsylvania. We consider the employment effects of three types of green locomotive manufacturing activities at Wabtec’s Lawrence Park site: 1) Tier 4 diesel-electric locomotives; 2) battery-electric locomotives without onsite battery production and 3) battery electric manufacturing with onsite battery production.

We estimate employment creation under 2 scenarios: an initial Phase 1, in which Wabtec produces 500 green locomotives per year at Lawrence Park and a Phase 2 in which production at Lawrence Park expands to 1,000 green locomotives per year. As of 2008, Wabtec had been producing locomotives at the Phase 2 level of about 1,000 locomotives per year. Phase 2 would therefore just return the Lawrence Plant facility to its earlier level of manufacturing activity.

We estimate that by producing 1,000 green locomotives per year at Lawrence Park, employment creation would range as follows, depending on which specific locomotive production activities are operating at the plant:

• 3,400 – 5,100 jobs at Lawrence Park itself;
• 3,060 – 5,100 jobs in Erie County outside of Lawrence Park;
• 9,860 – 14,960 in the U.S. economy overall.

About 800 people are currently employed at Lawrence Park directly involved in locomotive production. Expanding production to 1,000 locomotives per year would therefore produce a net increase in employment at the facility by between roughly 2,600 – 4,300 workers.

Expanding green locomotive manufacturing production at Wabtec’s Lawrence Park facility will produce major gains in employment conditions in Erie County. This will be true both through the increase in the number of job opportunities relative to the 126,000 people that currently comprise the area’s labor market, and through the relatively high compensation levels associated with jobs at the Lawrence Park facility itself.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.