South Korean solar firm cuts pay and hours for Georgia workers as US officials detain imports

ATLANTA (AP) — A South Korean solar company says it will temporarily reduce pay and working hours for about 1,000 of its 3,000 employees in Georgia because U.S. customs officials have been detaining imported components needed to make solar panels.

Qcells, a unit of South Korea’s Hanwha Solutions, said Friday that it will also lay off 300 workers from staffing agencies at its plants in Dalton and Cartersville, both northwest of Atlanta.

The company says U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been detaining imported components at ports on suspicion that they contain materials that may have been made with forced labor in China, meaning it can’t run its solar panel assembly lines at full strength.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced in August that her department was stepping up enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a 2021 law that restricts Chinese goods made with forced labor from entering the U.S. Published reports indicate that U.S. officials began detaining solar cells made by Qcells in June. A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection couldn’t immediately answer questions about Qcells on Friday.

Qcells says none of its materials or components are made with forced labor or even come from China. Spokesperson Marta Stoepker said the company maintains “robust supply chain due diligence measures” and “very detailed documentation,” which has been successful in getting some shipments released.

“Our latest supply chain is sourced completely outside of China and our legacy supply chains contain no material from Xinjiang province based on third party audits and supplier guarantees,” Stoepker said.

She said Qcells is continuing to cooperate and expects to resume full production in the coming weeks and months.

“Although our supply chain operations are beginning to normalize, today we shared with our employees that HR actions must be taken to improve operational efficiency until production capacity returns to normal levels,” Stoepker said in a statement.

Qcells has said it pays workers an average of about $53,000 a year. Workers will retain full benefits during furloughs.

Qcells is completing a $2.3 billion plant in Cartersville that will let it take polysilicon refined in Washington state and make ingots, wafers and solar cells — the building blocks of finished solar modules. That will allow it to reduce imports of solar modules. The company has said it will finish the plant even though President Donald Trump and the Republican Congress dismantled most of the tax credits for buying solar panels earlier this year.

“Our commitment to building the entire solar supply chain in the United States remains,” Stoepker said. “We will soon be back on track with the full force of our Georgia team delivering American-made energy to communities around the country.”