Massive layoffs at another Obama stimulus company

The President's investment hot streak continues.

01/30/2012

Hard on the heels of $118 million “stimulus” recipient Ener1 declaring bankruptcy comes news that another highly-touted “green energy success story” just laid off two-thirds of its workforce. From the Las Vegas Sun:

Just seven months after California-based solar power company Amonix Inc. opened its largest manufacturing plant, in North Las Vegas, the company’s contractor has laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce.

Flextronics Industrial, the Singapore solar panel manufacturer that partnered with Amonix to staff the new $18 million, 214,000-square-foot plant, laid off about 200 of its 300-plus employees Tuesday.

This one’s pretty small on the usual scale of Obama “investment” failure, as taxpayers were only forced to give $5.9 million to Amonix by the Obama stimulus plan. Still, it’s a real blow to Obama’s attempt to create American jobs by giving money to foreign “green energy “concerns. Obama bragged about his brilliance in compelling us to support Amonix during a summer 2010 visit to Las Vegas (hat tip: Gateway Pundit.)

The company says these job cuts are “temporary” and they’ll soon be hiring again, to meet demand for their new solar power system. The Las Vegas Sun report doesn’t make it sound like temporary belt-tightening:

The company scaled down at all levels of employment at the plant — which was hiring as recently as three months ago — from entry level assemblers, process engineers, production supervisors and quality-control techs, according to one employee who was laid off.

[…] Theodore Lewis, another employee, was working at the plant for six months before he and dozens of other employees were called into a mandatory meeting Tuesday.

“There was no excuse,” said Lewis, 34, who was never told his job was temporary. “They just said our job was done.”

Lewis said employees were confused and disappointed when they heard the news and were directed by human resources to look for other local jobs in retail.

Amazingly, Obama’s re-election strategy involves boasting of his job-creation prowess, and hoping desperately that voters don’t ask how long those wonderful stimulus jobs lasted, how many jobs were lost during the Obama presidency, how much the workforce contracted, and what the private sector might accomplish when liberated from ideologically-driven central planners.

John Hayward is a staff writer for HUMAN EVENTS, and author of the recently publishedDoctor Zero: Year One. Follow him on Twitter: Doc_0. Contact him by email atjhayward@eaglepub.com.