The U.S. Department of Labor has determined that all manufacturing employees laid off from SolarWorld Industries America Inc. as a result of the company’s shutdown of its 35-year-old solar-panel production plant in Camarillo, Calif., in September are eligible for federal trade-adjustment assistance, including grants for education to retrain them for new work.“How many more U.S. manufacturing jobs must the United States lose in this most promising renewable-energy industry, which Americans pioneered, before adequate remedies are put in place to offset the illegal practices of Big China Solar,? said company president Gordon Brinser.
The determination that Chinese imports helped cause the shutdown resulted from an investigation earlier this year by the department’s Office of Trade Adjustment Assistance, which announced the decision Friday in the Federal Register. The decision means that many of the 186 laid-off SolarWorld employees can tap federal assistance with job placement; expenses for job searches, relocation and retraining; income support during full-time retraining; and a tax credit on health-insurance premiums.
According to U.S. law, the Labor Department may certify workers for trade-adjustment assistance only if it finds that an increase in competing imports “contributed importantly” to the decline in sales or production of a firm and to the cause for worker layoffs. Though SolarWorld invested tens of millions of dollars automating the Camarillo plant after purchasing it in 2006, the company determined it needed to consolidate its U.S. manufacturing in Hillsboro, Ore., where it operates the Western Hemisphere’s largest solar plant. Consolidation was required, according to SolarWorld, to contend with the illegally subsidized and dumped solar products of China’s government-backed export drive. U.S. Department of Energy researchers have concluded that without state sponsorship, Chinese manufacturers would face a 5 percent cost disadvantage in producing and delivering solar products into the U.S. market. Read the full article: U.S. Labor Department Awards Aid to SolarWorld Workers Laid off Because of Chinese Solar Imports
The question is why China can afford the subsidy? Why they can suvive by dumping? Why the customers are buying from them?
Brainless Solarworld leaders can never figure it out.