October 5, 2016 (Last Updated: 2:42pm PT)
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
MIAMI – Merck & Co. will permanently shut down a Florida manufacturing site and lay off 112 employees, the company said in a note it filed with the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity last month.
The layoffs at the Miami Lakes facility are expected to occur in two waves—one in November and the second in December, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice. After the two rounds of layoffs, the company said it intends to keep two employees on site through the middle of 2017 “for other closure activities.” According to the notice, the employees facing pink slips have no bumping rights and are not represented by a union. Bumping rights allow a senior employee who is about to lose his position to take the job of a junior employee and cause that individual to be laid off instead.
Merck acquired the Miami Lakes property when the company bought Schering Plough in 2009. The site was marked almost immediately as one the company intended to shutter as it looked to slash 15 percent of its workforce, about 15,000 jobs, as part of an effort to reduce expenses. Merck had intended for the site to be closed or sold within a year, according to a 2010 article from the South Florida Business Journal. The Miami Lakes building was used in the manufacturing and packaging of pharmaceutical and commercial care products. The facility was about 135,000 square feet, the Journal reported.
“As we previously announced to our employees at the Miami Lakes facility, the company will cease operations there by the end of this year. The closure of the facility arises from the company’s ongoing review of global manufacturing capacities needed to support our redesigned operating model, with a significantly reduced and more flexible cost structure that enables our ability to focus on growth opportunities in high growth areas, key markets and key customers,” Lainie Keller, Merck’s director of global communications, said in an email to BioSpace.
In July 2010, Merck said part of the restructuring included phasing out operations at eight research sites. In addition to the Miami Lakes facility, Merck at the time targeted facilities in Comazzo, Italy; Cacem, Portugal; Azcapotzalco, Mexico; Coyoacan, Mexico, and Santo Amaro, Brazil. The cuts were intended to save the company about $3.5 billion, according to the statement.
Merck had achieved most of its planned job cuts as of August 2015. At the time the company said it has about 2,500 positions left to cut. In 2015, Merck said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that since the 2009 deal with Schering, the company has eliminated “approximately 29,160 positions comprised of employee separations, as well as the elimination of contractors and vacant positions.”
At the time Merck said it was committed to reducing its global real estate footprint and continue to “improve the efficiency of its manufacturing and supply network.”
Shares of Merck are trading at $62.87 as of 2:59 p.m.
