I'm puzzled by this:
One of the largest companies to manufacture solar panels in the United States uses a surprising resource to keep costs low and compete against producers from China: prison labor.
Suniva Inc, a Georgia-based solar cell and panel maker that is backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc, farms out a small portion of its manufacturing to federal inmates as part of a longstanding government program intended to prepare them for life after prison.
Suniva does not actively publicize its work with the prisons, saying it prefers to talk about its in-house factories in Georgia and Michigan, which handle most of its production and employ more than 350 people.
But the company's arrangement with Federal Prison Industries, known as Unicor, has helped Suniva move all of its solar panel assembly to the United States from Asia over the last 18 months, said Matt Card, vice president of global sales and manufacturing. The company says prison labor accounts for less than 10 percent of its panel manufacturing.
By making panels in the United States, Suniva has been able to capture lucrative federal contracts, avoid U.S. government tariffs on Chinese-made panels, and appeal to private sector customers who want American-made products. The company is the third-biggest producer of solar modules that are made in the United States, according to GTM Research.
"As a U.S. company you have to be very, very smart about where you manufacture," Card said.
Inmates working for Unicor, which has existed since the 1930s, have long made things like license plates and goods for the military. Solar panels were added to its list of products so that inmates could acquire skills in a new and growing industry and help government efforts to use more renewable energy.
The vast majority of Unicor's 12,000 inmate workers make products for the federal government, but as federal budgets have shrunk in recent years the company has been trying to attract more contract work from private businesses. About 10 percent of its inmate workers are now engaged in such work.
About 200 inmates make solar panels working in factories at prisons in Sheridan, Oregon and Otisville, New York. A request by Reuters to visit a prison solar factory was denied by prison officials.
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Suniva would not give any details on its financial arrangement with Unicor, citing government restrictions on the disclosure of contract terms. Unicor also declined to offer details on how individual contract manufacturing agreements are structured.
The average wage for inmate workers in the Unicor programs is 92 cents an hour, though employers pay a significantly higher amount to Unicor for overhead and other costs. Inmates responsible for court-ordered fines, victim restitution or child support payments are required to use half their earnings to meet those financial obligations.
Suniva has "no visibility" into how much inmates are paid, Card said.
"It costs us more to manufacture through Unicor than it does in China," he added.
Is this really happening? This is the first I've heard of it. What do U.S. trading partners think of it?
