Top 5 layoffs of 2007

It would be helpful to see the cuts against the total number of employees and to note if the cuts are worldwide or just US based. I ask for that since we are outsourcing everything out to China or India.

You left out Merck & Co. They are very cautious about thr public knowing tehy are eliminating positions/restructuring, but 2007 will leave thousands of victims with no jobs

What pharma plants have been annouced for closure?

"Outsouring to India and China never happens in the R&D department..." Ah, dude. Get a clue. It's happened and happening as we speak.

what about Lilly...they had closed a plant in Lafayette,IN that manufactured chemo...used to laugh at the locals working at the plant say "the product was used for care and compassion"...lol

Any announcement from Virtualscopics in Rochester NY on the reduction of their workforce? I heard that they cut 10% of their employees.

To the people trying to imply that allowing a free global labor market is responsible for layoffs (ie, implying we should all run out and elect as many democrats as you can because they are against free trade), consider that the now expanding economies in countries like China and India are beginning to show a significant improvement in demand for US products - particularly pharmaceuticals. Because their economies are improving from our outsourcing labor, more pressure is placed on their governments to cut back on unlawful generics, and as a result new demand from these countries may actually be what SAVES the pharmaceutical industry in the coming years. If that is too complicated for some to understand, consider this. No matter how many people will use a marketed drug, the cost of developing it remains constant. The more consumers, the better the profit margins. By bolstering the economies of India and China, we have just added 2 billion more consumers to the market who can now share the cost of developing new drugs. Tell me again how bad outsourcing is....

ITs not the outsourcing phenomena, its the drying up of R&D pipelines. Tell me 2 drugs launched in the last 5 years that are blockbusters (> $ 1 billion in sales annually). They would be no longer the BIG PHARMA, but they need to re-invent themselves as companies that care for people.

Does anyone know if any of these layoffs affected Pharmaceutical Sales reps? Or is it more R&D and production related?

I agree with the comment: "It would be helpful to see the cuts against the total number of employees and to note if the cuts are worldwide or just US based". Also, these companies have probably added positions as well which would offset the numbers somewhat.

Then there are other companies out there that will buy up, or at least attempt to buy up their competitors, to get their technologies and product. The thing with that is that once the honeymoon period is over with and they've gotten what they want, they will shut you down. I'm going through something like that right now with my corporate raider employers.

R&D is very valuable, but it is hard to go against the accounting department. If the upper management sees moving R&D to those countries as a way to stream line costs associated, then there are very few things that would stop them.

Just a thought!

Is it possible to know which Management Consultancies worked for these companies when these lay offs happened?

Vivek

This is not all bad. What happens is you have relatively high prices (value based priced; QALY based pricing) and relatively little incentive for competition to win on features ("the best best statin") or price. Therefore, they compete on sales reps, until their arms and legs are sticking out of doctors windows. Let's say a company spends 15% on cost of goods sold and 15% on research. For a $1B drug, that's 150M goods and 150M R&D. Does the company have $700M profit? Of course not. The profit is competed away, in ways not all that useful to consumers or society. Let's say (and this is just a cartoon, for example) of each $100M you have 15M drug cost, 15M R$D, $65M sales reps, and $5M profit. If you could restructure to 15M drug cost, 15M R&D, 30M sales reps, and $10M profit, society saves 30% (all patients or employers), the company's profit has doubled, and the sales reps are sharp people and can find other jobs (other than standing around with their arms and legs poking out of rep-packed doctors offices). This cartoon is hard to accomplish, although tax credits could do it. (Like a farm credit, let's say the company has $30M in extra reps for $5M in extra profit. Just give them the $5M in extra profit as a tax credit and society, in effect, saves $30M in healthcare costs. // Sales reps and important and good, I'm just saying downsize to where its rationale for the nation and industry and they aren't standing in line behind each other to little effect.