Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Republican Spending Plans Force Job Reductions at NREL

"We will continue to fight to build and maintain good jobs at NREL and the more than 5,500 private and public sector jobs dependent upon the work and products from NREL employees."

Golden, CO -- Today, the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden announced due to budget freezes and reductions they will have to implement a voluntary reduction in their overall workforce. This means hundreds of NREL scientists and employees will be offered an option to voluntarily terminate their job over the next few months.

U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, whose district includes NREL, issued the following statement in response:

Perlmutter stated: "Over the last 270 days, Washington Republicans' sole achievement is to ensure job reductions -- not encourage job creation. They want to to import oil and export jobs, and that is the wrong way to grow our economy and reduce our debt. Their reckless action of passing budgets six weeks at a time means NREL is forced to offer voluntary staff reductions at a time when we need to invest more in their innovative work to ensure our national economic security and energy independence. My number one priority is to get people back to work here in our country, because that’s the best thing we can do to pay our debt and move forward toward economic stability. We will continue to fight to build and maintain good jobs at NREL and the more than 5,500 private and public sector jobs dependent upon the work and products from NREL employees."