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The manufacturer under contract to build the MBTA’s new Red Line fleet will furlough nearly half its workforce in Massachusetts this spring as subway car shells from China remain detained at U.S. ports.
China Railway Rolling Stock Corp. will implement a two-month furlough of 161 workers at its Springfield plant beginning March 16, according to a state filing. The furlough affects about 40% of the 406 employees who work at the western Massachusetts facility, where partially assembled car shells shipped from China are outfitted for service on the Red and Orange Lines.
The disruption traces back to May, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection began detaining CRRC shipments at American ports as part of reviews under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a 2021 law that bars imports linked to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region and places a high burden of proof on importers to document their supply chains.
“CRRC MA announced a 60-day advance notice to its workforce of an impending 2-month furlough effective Monday, March 16th,” spokesperson Lydia Rivera told the News Service. “Due to the unexpected continuing detainment of car shells and components held at port related to a detention notice from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 161 workers will be furloughed.”
Rivera said the company and its suppliers moved quickly to respond when the shipments containing subway parts were detained, assembling a task force of 80 internal and external professionals and legal experts to trace the origins of materials and components across a sprawling global supply chain.
CRRC’s suppliers “diligently worked to meet the stringent and extraordinary requirements of the detention notice from CBP by gathering all necessary documentation,” she said, including more than 2,000 document files submitted Jan. 7 for review.
The scope of that effort included tracing parts through as many as eight tiers of sub-suppliers, conducting more than 100 on-site visits, holding upward of 1,000 planning sessions, and submitting about 2,100 files totaling about 2.1 gigabytes of data — the rough equivalent of 100,000 to 150,000 pages of documentation, according to the MBTA. CRRC has also met with federal officials to walk through the submission.
Still, the prolonged detention has now reached the Springfield assembly line.
The furlough will land in a city that has touted the plant as a manufacturing anchor. Of the 406 employees working in Springfield, 184 live in the city, and 94% of the workforce lives in the greater Springfield metropolitan area, according to the company. The facility employs 254 union production workers represented by Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 63 and Electrical Workers Local Union 7, with another nine union employees working out of MBTA project field locations.
“We are very appreciative of the largest railway car manufacturing company in the world, CRRC, building their North American base right here in Springfield,” Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno said in 2016 when the plant was built. “The creation of hundreds of good paying jobs, the spin-off benefits to our vendors, the linkage to our students at Putnam Vocational Technical Academy, Western New England University and the use of our labor unions’ workforce spreads the wealth.”
Rivera said CRRC will continue health care coverage for furloughed employees and has coordinated with the MassHire Rapid Response Team to assist workers with unemployment claims. MassHire staff are scheduled to be onsite at the plant March 3 through March 5 to provide information about available programs.
MBTA leaders stressed they are working with the manufacturer and federal officials to resolve the issues.
“Since the very first day the CRRC shipment has been held, they have demonstrated their commitment to appropriately responding to [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] requests to allow the delivery and production of the cars to continue,” said Interim Transportation Secretary and MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng.
Eng said the T has stayed in close contact with Customs and Border Protection and with labor at the plant.
“We all want to avoid or minimize any potential impacts on the plant’s labor force, which has been producing high-performing subway cars,” he said, adding that in cases where documentation of compliance with the forced labor law has been difficult to obtain, CRRC has worked to identify alternative suppliers that can meet federal requirements.
Eng said he remains confident that by staying “laser-focused on answering CBP’s outstanding questions,” shipments will resume.
The furlough comes as the Red Line program remains years behind schedule.
Under a contract first awarded in 2014 during the Patrick administration, CRRC is responsible for delivering 404 heavy-rail cars — 152 for the Orange Line and 252 for the Red Line.
In a December 2025 MBTA board of directors meeting the T’s chief operating officer, Ryan Coholan said the transit authority had received the “final” pair of Orange Line cars and assured board members that “as of right now, everything is still coming in, slowly but surely, into the country.”
This week, a representative from the T said the detainment of the train shells and other imported components from China has been “continuous since May.”
On the Red Line, just 60 cars have arrived to date, leaving the project less than one-quarter complete.
Previous contract terms called on CRRC to deliver Orange Line cars by the end of 2021 and Red Line cars by September 2023. A contract “reset” in 2024 lifted the contract’s value above $1 billion and set a new completion deadline of late 2027.
When asked if the furlough would affect Red Line deliveries, Rivera said CRRC hopes the plant can resume production.
“CRRC MA hopes that its car shells and components will be released and that business operations will resume in an orderly manner, enabling the company to recall furloughed employees and resume building rail vehicles for the MBTA and Los Angeles Metro,” Rivera said.
MBTA spokesperson Lisa Battiston said more Red Line cars are expected to be delivered this winter, though the agency did not specify how many.
The latest setback lands amid a charged political backdrop.
Gov. Maura Healey, who elevated Eng to lead the T and has made MBTA improvements a signature issue, is touting progress in a new campaign video released Monday to launch her second run for governor.
“When I took office the T was a disaster, and we turned it around,” Healey says in the ad, which casts President Donald Trump as a foil and highlights her administration’s efforts to stabilize the transit system.
For now, the Red Line’s path forward hinges on a federal review far from the tracks of Massachusetts.
With additional reporting from WBUR’s Andrea Perdomo-Hernandez.
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