I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.
This time last year, Tom Luben ran several research projects at the large Environmental Protection Agency campus in Research Triangle Park. Along with a team of doctoral students in the Office of Research and Development, he examined possible links between climate exposures (like extreme heat) and urban neighborhoods historically harmed by discriminatory redlining practices.
“Of course, all of that stuff ended in January,” he said in a phone interview this week.
Twelve months and one president later, the Office of Research and Development is dissolved and Luben is one of six former EPA employees who just legally challenged the agency’s decision to fire him for signing a petition. The online dissent letter posted in late June denounced the policies of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, an appointee of President Donald Trump. Within a week of its release, the EPA had placed nearly 140 workers on administrative leave.
While most were eventually allowed to return, a handful of workers like Luben and Triangle biologist John Darling were fired. They suspect their seniority played a factor.
The EPA declined to comment on their appeals, which will be heard by an independent federal Merit system protection board. But the environmental agency did criticize all the petition signers earlier this year, stating it had “a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November.”
Darling and Luben have been with the EPA since 2006 and 2007 respectively. Darling seeks reinstatement while Luben has found another job and just wants back pay and a correction to his personnel record.
“I still believe strongly in the mission of the agency,” Luben, a Durham resident, said. “I am heartbroken that the Office of Research and Development is being dismantled.”
Wolfspeed layoffs and a quiet Chatham factory
On Monday, the semiconductor company Wolfspeed announced it had received nearly $700 million through a lucrative manufacturing credit created by the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. This money was expected and welcome for the Durham chipmaker two months removed from bankruptcy. It accounts for most of the tax refunds Wolfspeed anticipates it will see for recently constructing a multibillion-dollar materials plant in Chatham County.
What Wolfspeed didn’t share Monday, and what it still won’t confirm, is that it laid off some North Carolina employees that same day. It’s not clear how many positions were affected, but LinkedIn posts show multiple emergency services staff were among those let go. I’ve been told of cuts in Durham and at the company’s Chatham County site near Siler City.
“We do not have a comment regarding the question of layoffs,” Wolfspeed head of investor relations Tyler Gronbach said in an email Thursday.
These appear to be the first staff reductions the company has made since it emerged from Chapter 11 in late September with a new ownership structure and roughly 70% less debt. Job cuts were common at Wolfspeed in the year leading up to bankruptcy, a period in which it dropped its total workforce by almost one-third, from around 5,000 to 3,400.
Wolfspeed did not file a WARN Notice with the state this week, which indicates its recent layoffs were likely smaller in scope.
On Thursday, I spoke to a former Wolfspeed employee who was laid off from the Siler City site this year. They described the massive facility having relatively few workers and a pretty empty parking lot.
“It’s built for high demand,” they said, estimating fewer than 100 employees report to the site that Wolfspeed pledged would eventually create just over 1,800 jobs. “A lot of the demand is still going through Durham (facilities).” The former employee requested anonymity when discussing their work experience, and Wolfspeed declined to confirm how many workers report to its Chatham factory.
After building facilities to accommodate rosy electric vehicle projections a few years ago, the company now looks to diversify where its patented silicon carbide chips go. More data centers. More energy uses. More defense applications.
$700 million more dollars will help this evolution, the company said this week. For now, its quiet Siler City site just got a bit quieter.
Clearing my cache (Part 1: Thanksgiving week edition)
Clearing my cache (Part 2)
“You don’t score if you don’t shoot,” Stein told reporters during an economic development press conference. “And so, we shoot, and we just try to make as many of those shots as we can.”
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