Pfizer To Shut Down 3 Michigan Facilities - 2,400 jobs lost

[Matt]

Pfizer To Shut Down 3 Michigan Facilities

POSTED: 12:04 pm EST January 22, 2007
UPDATED: 6:41 pm EST January 22, 2007

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Pfizer Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeffery B. Kindler announced plans to make major cuts to improve the company's future.

Pfizer Inc. said Monday that it will close its human health research and development facilities in Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo, affecting about 2,400 jobs.

The Ann Arbor facility has about 2,100 employees. Also affected are approximately 250 workers in downtown Kalamazoo and another 60 in western Wayne County's Plymouth Township.

But the world's largest drugmaker said it will continue to maintain manufacturing and animal-health research operations in the Kalamazoo area, preserving about 3,800 jobs.

Pfizer announced in March 2005 that it was closing a Holland manufacturing plant with 328 employees. About 60 people continue to work at the facility as it is being decommissioned, said Rick Chambers, a Pfizer spokesman in Michigan.

New York-based Pfizer also said in a news release that it will close manufacturing plants in New York and Nebraska as part of a plan to cut costs by up to $2 billion per year. About 10,000 jobs will be lost.

The latest cuts come on the heels of Pfizer's announcement two months ago that it was laying off about 20 percent of its U.S. sales representatives, around 2,200 people. Those cuts are included in the layoffs announced Monday.

The restructuring is part of an effort by Pfizer to cut costs by up to $2 billion a year amid fierce competition from generic drugs.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm planned an afternoon news conference in Ann Arbor to discuss Pfizer's announcement.

In July 2005, the company announced a three-year global-restructuring plan aimed at cutting costs and increasing efficiency. At the time, Pfizer had about 8,500 employees in Michigan, including around 5,000 in the Kalamazoo area and 2,500 in Ann Arbor.

Many of the job cuts came through normal attrition, retirement, hiring freezes and unfilled vacancies. Other positions were moved within the state and into and out of Michigan.

Kalamazoo was the longtime home of drugmaker Upjohn Co. before it merged in 2000 with Pharmacia Corp. After Pfizer acquired Pharmacia in 2003, about 1,100 jobs were cut or moved out of the Kalamazoo area.

Pfizer's leadership team discussed the challenges and opportunities facing the company and summarized Pfizer's most immediate priorities.

The Wall Street Journal obtained information from Pfizer stating the following:

Priority One: Maximize revenus in both the short and long term. This will include maximizing revenues from its current in-line portfolio and new products. In 2007, the company will further highlight Lipitor's benefits, build on Celebrex's success, and continue Lyrica's momentum.

Priority Two: Establish a smaller and more flexible cost base.

This will include the elimination of 10,000 positions or about 10 percent of Pfizer's total worldwide workforce by the end of next year. Pfizer will continue to consolidate its worldwide manufacturing operations with the closer of two additional manufacturing sites, Brooklun, NY and Omaha, NE. In addition, the company will pursue the sale of a third site in Feucht, Germany, subject to consulation with works councils and local labor law.

In Research and Development, the company is planning to close three research sites in the United States; Ann Arbor, Esperion and Kalamazoo. The company is also proposing to close research sites in Nagoya, Japan and Amboise, France.

Priority Three: Create smaller, more focused and entrepreneurial business units that will enhance innovation and draw on the advnatages of scare and resources.

Pfizer Inc also announced Monday that revenues for 2006 increased 2 percent, reported diluted EPS grew 144 percent, and adjusted diluted EPS(1) grew 6 percent versus 2005. Revenues in the fourth quarter of 2006 were substantially unchanged, reported diluted EPS grew 257 percent, and adjusted diluted EPS(1) decreased 12 percent versus the comparable quarter in 2005.

[Uncle Mxy]

Everything I've heard suggests that Pfizer in AA was working on products that made money, and they've effectively rewarded fuckups in other parts of Pfizer by closing AA. Check this out from a few weeks ago. All the people involved with this massive fuckup were saved, so AA could be shit-canned:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...612050354/1001

[MikeMyers]

I take a lot of crap from friends because I have a "lazy government job" but I don't have to worry about losing my job. A friend's place laid off quite a few people the week before Xmas. Now that is cold. It is only going to get worse in Michigan. Save your money and brace yourselves.

[bigdt87]

I say we trade Nazr to Wyoming for its low unemployment rate.

[Glenn]

Initial reports (Crain's Detroit) were that 7,000 Michigan jobs were going to be lost.

So this is... good news?

[Uncle Mxy]

The lower-paying jobs were saved.

The higher-paying jobs were scrapped.

No one expected the AA lab part to go away, because they had current, productive product cycles and leading products, unlike most of the other facilties that were spared. The AA lab made their #1 moneymaker (Lipitor, whose patent expires soon) and their highest-flying new product (Lyrica). Cost-wise, the AA lab was a little less expensive than the Connecticut and California faciities. The -business- logic just doesn't make sense.

[WTFchris]

so what did Jenny have to say about this in her presser?

[Tahoe]

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Pfizer Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeffery B. Kindler announced plans to make major cuts to improve the company's future.


I'm sure the peeps who are about to be layed off are overjoyed they were able to 'improve the company's future'

[Uncle Mxy]

so what did Jenny have to say about this in her presser?

Not much -- a "punch to the gut" was the phrase I remembered from yesterday, and there's a few more words today. This assclown from a Republican so-called "think tank" amused me, though:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...86/1008/NEWS06

David Littmann, former economist at Comerica Bank now with the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said Granholm's statements after Pfizer's announcement make him think she and many other elected state officials don't grasp the enormity of the economic challenge facing the state.

While Pfizer's decision may have been based on dozens of factors unrelated to circumstances in Michigan, Littmann said, what happens after those workers are displaced has everything to do with the state's climate for business and enterprise.

"The objective is to have an economy that absorbs the kind of jobs" to be lost in Ann Arbor, he said, "and Michigan is not very welcoming to the industries that are in position to do that."

Littmann ignores the fact the largest impediment toward drawing biotech R&D industries to Michigan, such that the economy "absorbs the kind of jobs to be lost in Ann Arbor" are the Republican-led stem cell research laws. The states keeping their Pfizer labs all recently supported big-deal stem cell initiatives that put money in their pockets. Apart from that, we actually had the most Big Pharma friendly legal climate in the nation (too friendly, as Michigan Vioxx victims would attest).

Check out this editorial:

http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...OL06/701230400