Schering Plough may cut jobs

SCHERING-Plough’s 1,400-strong Irish workforce are bracing themselves for significant job losses today.

Workers at the firm’s plant at Brinny, Innishannon, County Cork, and Bray and Rathdrum in Co Wicklow, fear the loss-making pharmaceutical company will cut jobs in a bid to reverse losses of €735m in the year to the end of December.

In January, 2004, the firm offered 900 employees early retirement and cut 400 jobs, including 170 in Cork, to trim payroll expenses.

This time around workers at the Brinny plant fear they will again bear the brunt of any job losses in Ireland when workers assemble in building 21 at 1pm to be addressed by the factory’s general manager Dr Colman Casey and other senior executives. A spokesperson said they did wish to comment on the briefing.

The mood at the plant has been described as sombre.

The Brinny plant makes Peg-Intron, an injected immune-boosting interferon that is part of a two-drug combination treatment for hepatitis C.

Peg-Intron, a form of interferon, is one of Schering-Plough’s biggest sellers. However, sales were hit when Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche Group launched competition to Peg-Intron and grabbed half of the US market.

Schering-Plough has about 30,000 employees worldwide, with about 7,000 at its head office in New Jersey, USA.

Schering-Plough has already announced a $9.4bn repatriation of profits from countries like Ireland to the US to take advantage of a once-off tax break introduced as an initiative by the Bush presidency.

The bulk of recent losses, $807m, derive from one- time-only tax payments understood to relate to the repatriation process that will not reoccur in 2005.

While losses continued to mount in 2004, the firm’s sales grew for the second quarter in a row. Revenues for the final quarter rose 12% to $2.2bn. For the fiscal year ending December 31, the firm lost $947m, against losses of $92m, in 2003. Revenues for the year fell 1% to $8.27bn.