Four months after Bayer handed pink slips to 90 staffers at its U.S. headquarters in Whippany, New Jersey, the company is laying off 70 more workers at the site.
The new reductions, which are effective Oct. 25, were revealed (PDF) in a New Jersey Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification.
"We are adopting a new operating model and with it, a new organizational structure. Our new way of working will enable more agility, empower employees to innovate and act, and deepen the focus on our mission," Bayer said in an emailed statement. "Aligned with this shift, we are adjusting our U.S. structure, resulting in some positions being eliminated or redesigned, and a few new roles being created."
The downsizing is part of Bayer's major reorganization, dubbed “dynamic shared ownership,” which was designed by CEO Bill Anderson to reduce levels of bureaucracy at the struggling conglomerate. Bayer started the year $34.5 billion in debt and revealed a plan in February to slash investor dividends to the legal minimum over the next three years.
In March, Anderson dismantled the leadership team of Bayer’s pharma sector, reducing it from 14 to eight executives. Three members of the executive team were let go, while the three others were demoted. In January, Bayer executed a similar overhaul of its crop science sector, dismissing three execs, each with at least 27 years of experience at the company.
After eliminating 1,500 positions in the first three months of this year, with roughly two-thirds of those being managerial jobs, Bayer’s employee count was at 98,200, which represents a 3.5% drop year over year.
“We’ve said from the beginning, our focus really isn’t on a head count number,” Anderson said during an investor call in May. “Our focus is really relentless on making sure that every job in the company is oriented around the mission.”
Layoffs will continue into 2025, the company has said, with the goal to save the company 500 million euros ($541 million) this year and 2 billion euros ($2.16 billion) in 2026.
Bayer is still digging out from its disastrous $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto in 2018, which brought with it legal claims, now numbering in the tens of thousands, that the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer.