DALTON, Ga. – A major solar manufacturer is cutting pay and working hours for roughly one-third of its Georgia workforce after U.S. customs officials began detaining imported components suspected of being linked to forced labor in China, the company confirmed Friday.
That company also has offices right here in New Jersey, located in Teaneck.
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Qcells, the U.S. unit of South Korea’s Hanwha Solutions, said the decision affects about 1,000 of its 3,000 employees at plants in Dalton and Cartersville.
The company will also lay off about 300 temporary workers supplied by staffing agencies.
The move comes after U.S. Customs and Border Protection began holding shipments of solar cells earlier this year under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a 2021 law banning goods tied to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced in August that enforcement efforts would intensify across several industries, including solar energy.
Published reports indicate that officials began detaining Qcells shipments in June, though the agency has not commented publicly on specific cases.
Qcells insists that none of its materials or components are made in China or with forced labor. Company spokesperson Marta Stoepker said Qcells maintains “robust supply chain due diligence measures” and “very detailed documentation,” adding that some shipments have already been released following review.
“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.
The company said full-time employees will keep their benefits during furloughs and that operations should normalize as supply chains stabilize.
“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.
Qcells’ Georgia plants, central to the state’s growing clean-energy manufacturing sector, have been heralded as symbols of U.S. investment in renewable technology. The pay cuts and furloughs, however, highlight the vulnerability of global supply chains to trade enforcement under forced-labor laws.
