More than 1,800 people lost their jobs when President Obama’s favorite clean energy investment – Solyndra Corp. – filed for bankruptcy last year, according to U.S. Department of Labor documents obtained by a San Francisco-area web newsite.
“On the day it closed, Solyndra said it was laying off 1,100 full-time and temporary employees,” the Bay Citizen reports today. “But 1,861 workers lost their jobs as the solar panel manufacturer shut its doors, according to U.S. Labor Department documents provided to The Bay Citizen under the Freedom of Information Act.
Recommended Stories
“The documents also show the Fremont-based company increased production in 2011, even though it failed to sell all the panels it made the previous year.
“By the time it closed last August, Solyndra had an unsold inventory of more than 23 megawatts – enough solar panels to power about 23,000 homes.”
The Solyndra plant in Fremont, Calif., has become a lightning rod in the 2012 presidential race, with likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney pointing to it as the prime example of what he views as President Obama’s failed economic policies.
Solyndra, whose major investor was an Obama fund raising bundler from Oklahoma, received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy in 2010. Obama subsequently visited the firm’s solar panel production plant and called the company “a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism.”
After the company declared bankruptcy last year, it became the focus of a congressional investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
You can read more from the Bay Citizen here.
