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Ex-employees of the failed solar panel company Solyndra have applied for aid under the federal governments Trade Adjustment Assistance program, the Labor Department has confirmed.
If approved, the employees of what was once touted as a leading exemplar of the White Houses green jobs program will be eligible for more federal funds to enable them to be retrained for other jobs.
It would be an ironic coda to the saga of Solyndra, which manufactured solar panels and received $527 million in loan guarantees from the Energy Department and praise from President Obama during visits to the firms California headquarters.
Now those green workers will be seeking the governments help to find work again and not necessarily in the conservation jobs sector.
A source at the department confirmed the request for assistance was received on Sept. 2, just two days after the company filed bankruptcy, placing all 1,100 employees out of work.
It is being evaluated, the source told IBD, noting that most applications take 60 days for approval.
The Solyndra application could be complicated by the fact the company is the subject of a federal probe. FBI officers raided the firms headquarters earlier this month.
A top Department of Energy official in charge of the office that awarded Solyndra LLC $535 million in loan guarantees insisted the company was headed in the right direction months before the firm went bankrupt and saw its offices raided by the FBI. This is a company that doubled their revenues and essentially doubled them again, year over year, Jonathan Silver, Energy Department loans chief, said in an April 2011 interview with SNL Renewable Energy Weekly, a trade publication. They are going in the right direction.
In fact, four months after the comments, Solyndra fired 1,000 employees, ceased operations, filed for bankruptcy, saw its offices raided by the FBI and its top two executives hauled before Congress, only to invoke their Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify. In public statements prior to Solyndras collapse, Mr. Silver seemed confident the company was going to succeed. During the same April 2011 interview, Mr. Silver, a venture capitalist before joining the Energy Department, said Solyndra had sold hundreds of thousands of solar panels around the world and that it has been misunderstood by the popular press.
Its not as if this is some kind of startup that is not working, he said. Mr. Silver, who was not with the Energy Department in 2009 when the loan guarantees were awarded, was not made available by the Energy Department for an interview for this article, in response to written questions about whether he was relying on financial information from Solyndra when he made the statements. As part of their review of loan applications and monitoring of the projects we support, career staff in the [Department of Energy] loan office review audited financial information provided by the companies under the penalty of law, Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera told The Washington Times in an email.
Theres no doubt Solyndras financial reporting is coming under sharp scrutiny these days after the FBI raided the companys headquarters last month. Whats more, the Justice Department last week sought a trustee to oversee the company in bankruptcy, saying Solyndra executives havent been forthcoming when asked for information about its contracts with customers. Yet while the companys collapse last month seemed sudden, there were signs of trouble. In November 2010, for instance, Solyndra announced it was closing its older plant and laying off 135 temporary workers and 40 full-time staff. But Mr. Silver later said the so-called layoffs were misunderstood.
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Administration officials and outside advisers warned that President Obama should consider dropping plans to visit a solar startup company in 2010 because its mounting financial problems might ultimately embarrass the White House. A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra, California investor and Obama fundraiser Steve Westly wrote to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in May 2010. Many of us believe the companys cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term. . . . I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press.
The warning, which did not convince the White House to drop the Obama factory visit, was detailed in e-mails released Monday by the Democratic minority on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The panel is investigating a $535 million government-backed loan to the now-shuttered company. Democrats said the e-mails demonstrate that there was no political favoritism for Solyndra or for the Obama fundraiser whose family foundation held an interest in the company. But the internal messages revealed for the first time the high level of White House interest in the startup and its faltering finances after the Energy Department backed it with $535 million in loans.
On Monday, Obama made his first public comments about Solyndras collapse, saying that he does not regret supporting or visiting the company as part of his administrations backing of clean-energy companies. Now there are going to be some failures, he said in an ABC News/Yahoo online television interview. Hindsight is always 20/20. It went through the normal review process and people thought this was a good bet. Since Solyndra filed for bankruptcy on Aug. 31, leaving taxpayers on the hook for almost half a billion dollars, the White House has said that decisions about supporting the solar-panel manufacturer were made by career employees at the Department of Energy, starting in the Bush administration.
But the e-mails capture the vigorous debate within the Obama White House about whether the solar-panel manufacturer was a smart bet. They also highlight the angst inside the West Wing about whether the presidents initiative to support clean energy was ill-equipped to pick winners, or could, as some hoped, help validate Obamas use of $80 billion in stimulus to build a clean-energy industry.
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