Drug company employees fear major job losses

FEARS are mounting that sweeping job losses are imminent at Pfizer plants across the country.

Facilities in Cork could bear a particularly heavy brunt.

Senior sources within the company have told the Irish Examiner that now the company has halted production of a drug expected to be its biggest earner, they believe the company will cut jobs.

A review of operations worldwide is ongoing and the outcome of that is expected to be announced within the next two weeks with January 22 mooted as the likely date.

While the company has indicated the result of that review will have “relatively little” effect on the Irish operation, it is more than likely that the concurrent review of Irish operations, including six manufacturing facilities in Cork and Dublin, will take its findings into account.

The outcome of the Irish examination will not be published until later in the year.

At the end of last year Pfizer stopped development of Torcetrapib, a cholesterol treatment drug that was expected to become its biggest earner.

A special plant to manufacture Torcetrapib was opened by Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin in Cork in 2005 at a cost of $90 million. It was not grant-aided and Pfizer bore the total cost of the facility.

The plant was forced to abandon production plans because of increased deaths and heart problems among patients given the product in a late-stage trial.

Pfizer was spending around $800m to develop Torcetrapib, which was supposed to fill the void when cholesterol treatment Lipitor loses patent protection in either 2010 or 2011.

“There are genuine fears among the workforce that there will be major job cuts announced, especially in Cork where the drug was to be manufactured. We are hearing this from sources high up in the company,” a Pfizer source said.

A company spokesman said it was not prepared to talk about job losses. He said the failure of Torcetrapib was one of the factors that was being considered.

“The whole thing is being presented as more significant than it actually is,” he added.