Merck West Point, PA
Posted on 11/05/2013 12:33:48 PM PST by Phillyred
The drugmaker Merck & Co. will lay off 500 people from its facility in West Point, Montgomery County, between Dec. 23 and Jan. 5.
Merck said on Oct. 1 that it would eliminate 8,500 jobs from its worldwide workforce beyond the 7,500 it had not yet cut from an earlier restructuring plan, but company officials were not specific about where and when.
Several big pharmaceutical companies with operations in the area are cutting jobs. Message boards devoted to Merck have been full of discussions about which units would lose people, but official public notice of the 500 job cuts at the West Point facility came because of a federal law called the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN).
The law is intended to give workers notice of impending layoffs at companies with more than 100 full-time employees. Merck this week posted a WARN notice on the Pennsylvania Department of Labor website.
MORE COVERAGE Getting Glaxo back to good health AstraZeneca profit off 18.4%, but no new cuts in Delaware Johnson & Johnson still carried by drugs Pfizer earnings add evidence to pharma's challenge "We are committed to managing these separation aspects with dignity and respect for our employees, with the greatest expedience and will provide appropriate support during this transition," spokeswoman Lainie Keller said Friday evening in an e-mail in response to questions, including about the timing of the holiday layoffs.
Keller declined to specify which divisions at West Point would have layoffs. "I don't have details on any further reductions at this time," she said in the e-mail.
Merck has been under pressure from Wall Street investors to produce more revenue and profits than it has in recent years. Philadelphia native and chief executive officer Ken Frazier named a new leader of research and development early in 2013, but medicine can take a decade to go from the laboratory to a pharmacist's shelf. Besides the recently announced layoffs, Frazier said Merck was accelerating the closure of facilities. In October 2012 Merck said it would move its headquarters from Whitehouse Station, N.J., to Summit, N.J., but that plan was scrapped Oct. 1. The Summit facility will also close, and headquarters functions will move into the Merck facility in Kenilworth, N.J.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20131102_Merck_files_notice_of_500_Montco_layoffs.html#2IEjR44qhkXpIriF.99
Hope-N-Change...
And where is POTUS touting the benfits of ObamaCare on this? ACA has achieved the following:
Merck profits have been reduced such that they need to reduce their workforce by 500!
GLAXO, AstraZeneca, and OTC producers Johnason and Johnson have lost profit over the last 6 months, too! We foresee more reductions in the Big Pharma workforce (the greedy bastards!).
ACA is acheiving its goals. Big Pharma is being defeated! (Please, don’t look at your recent 401K report. Please!)
Merck West Point, PA
Liberals and Democrats have wanted to take this industry down for years.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Pharmaceutical companies have provided some of the best salaried jobs in this country. This industry has now lost hundreds of thousands of jobs.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
This week, the pharmaceutical giant Merck announced it will cut 8,500 jobs in an effort to remain competitive in a rapidly changing drug industry. Earlier this year, Merck announced plans to cut 7,500 jobs, bringing the total of workers let go to 16,000. In all, Merck intends to lay off one out of every five of its employees.
At the same time, top Merck officials are urging Congress to loosen the nation's immigration laws to allow more foreign workers into the United States.
Been in there. Nasty place. The people, the administration, and the chemicals — all nasty. I wouldn’t buy property within five miles of that place.
Nice!
Happy Kwanza, Suckers!
Merck N Change
I wonder if this means Merck will reduce the donations to leftist organizations?
8500 and 500 are big differences
Of course when you only have to manufacture the red pill, or the blue pill, your workforce can stand to shrink a little.
Whats the big Pharma in West Conshohocken? Couple years ago you could not drive in the area after 3:00 in the afternoon. Traffic was unreal.. Now, no problem, no traffic.. the number of job cuts must have been huge!
I worked for Merck. This is an old song and dance for them. The people cut will be those with the highest salaries (non-executive of course) and the most years of service. Then they will change each job description and immediately begin re-hiring more people at lower salaries. This goes on constantly. The Whitehouse property is a white elephant that will sit vacant for eternity. The Schering Kenilworth property is old and decaying. I can’t think of a better end result for these morons.
Johnson Matthey Pharma Services
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