The ax will fall today on some 200 sales and marketing support jobs at Eli Lilly, the Indianapolis Star reports. The cuts will come in Lilly's U.S. biomedicine group, and more than half of the job losses will come in the company's hometown of Indianapolis.
The cuts are just a fraction of the companywide job losses planned as part of an ongoing worldwide restructuring. Last fall, the company announced some 5,500 cuts to the global payroll. But this latest is the largest set of cuts since March, when Lilly terminated 200 jobs in its research labs.
Lilly workers shown the door will have the chance to apply for other jobs within the company, but as spokesman Ed Sagabiel told IndyStar, the number of job openings is limited.
Lilly is far from alone in eliminating thousands of jobs; in fact, compared with the mega-job cuts associated with the megamergers of Pfizer and Wyeth on one hand and Merck and Schering Plough on the other, Lilly's restructuring is on the small side. Still, for the 200 or so who will pack their belongings today, it's not the total that counts. It's the one pink slip that they each received.
- read the IndyStar news