Big Pharma Giant Merck To Cut 15% of Employees

Big Pharma is supposed to be an advancing sector, where jobs are plentiful for people with the right skill set.

But don’t tell that to employees at multi-national giant Merck, where about 15,000 of them have been told they’ll be getting the axe – if they haven’t been cut already.

The company plans to lay off about 15 percent of its work force over the next two years as part of a global merger restructuring, according to an announcement it issued earlier this month.

Big Pharma is supposed to be an advancing sector, where jobs are plentiful for people with the right skill set.

But don’t tell that to employees at multi-national giant Merck, where about 15,000 of them have been told they’ll be getting the axe – if they haven’t been cut already.

The company plans to lay off about 15 percent of its work force over the next two years as part of a global merger restructuring, according to an announcement it issued earlier this month.

Merck said it also planned to close eight research and eight manufacturing sites worldwide.

The restructuring is expected to save $2.7 billion to $3.1 billion in 2012, the company said.

Meanwhile, the pretax cost of the initial phase of the cost-cutting program is expected to range from $3.5 billion to $4.3 billion, much of it in severance packages for employees.

Which makes us at EconomyWatch wonder what the point of it is – even from a business, let alone human, perspective ???

Merck makes the osteoporosis medication Fosamax, the allergy and asthma drug Singulair and the Gardasil vaccine for the human papilloma virus.

In a $41 billion merger, Merck acquired Schering-Plough, whose popular brands like the nasal spray Nasonex, the allergy drug Claritin and the Coppertone sunscreen brand.

As part of the postmerger reorganization, Merck said it planned to create a international network of 16 major research and development centers.

It had indicated in February on a conference call that the work force would shrink, as a result of the merger, to as much as 15 percent.

Meanwhile, over the next two years, the company plans to close a total of eight research sites — in Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Scotland and Cambridge, Mass.

The company also plans to stop manufacturing at a total of eight plants; in Italy, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Singapore and Miami Lakes, Fl.

As a result of mergers and cutbacks in sales forces, the pharmaceutical industry has been shedding jobs over the last few years.

In the first half of this year, drug makers announced that they planned to cut about 35,000 jobs, according to a report published by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Last year, drug makers said that they planned to cut 51,549 jobs, the report said.

That figure included an announcement by Pfizer, which merged last year with Wyeth, that it planned to reduce the combined work force by 19,000.

The pharmaceutical industry in the United States currently employs approximately 277,200 people in the United States.

That is down 5 percent compared to two years ago, according to this article in the New York Times.