Last year, GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) announced plans to slim down its Research Triangle Park, NC-based operations, chopping 900 jobs. Now, it's telling state officials that almost 200 workers are heading for the door.
According to a WARN notice from the North Carolina Department of Commerce, the British pharma giant plans to cut 180 sales, managerial, operations, marketing and support staff roles--some in the field and some in-house, company spokeswoman Mary Anne Rhyne told FiercePharma via email. Those layoffs will happen during the first half of this year, and the departing employees will be eligible for severance pay, medical coverage, and outplacement support, the notice says.
The reductions are the "continuing implementation" of the massive restructuring the company announced with its Q3 results last year, Rhyne said. "Groups affected by the restructuring are making progress at different paces, and that will last at least through this quarter and possibly longer," she wrote.
The way GSK sees it, the restructuring will "improve operational performance and contribute to a multiyear cost savings initiative" across its commercial ops, global support functions, and R&D and manufacturing facilities. And cost savings is certainly something the British drugmaker could use as declining sales of blockbuster Advair cut deep into its top line.
Those Advair struggles have already triggered their fair share of job cuts, with the company last December revealing plans to scale back its North Carolina forces by 900. Of those cuts--chemists, engineers, biologists, clinical development scientists, statisticians and more--350 were set for this year's first quarter, with the remaining 450 following in the next three months and the rest coming later in the year.
But it's not just North Carolina that's feeling the burn as rivals whittle down Advair's haul. Last week, the company filed a WARN notice in Pennsylvania indicating that it would scrap 150 jobs across its commercial and R&D businesses in the Philadelphia area, FierceBiotech reported.
- read the NC WARN notice (PDF)
- get more from FierceBiotech
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