As Amgen’s Chris Bush sees it, the biotechnology industry doesn’t have enough people to meet the growing industry’s staffing needs, so it’s created something like a “chess game.”
The more talented and experienced people within the industry, Bush said, tend to travel between companies, taking advantage of the dearth of skill in order to get better jobs.
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“There just aren’t enough bodies out there in the industry,” said Bush, an engineer in Amgen’s cell culture and purification division. He was speaking at the University of Rhode Island’s Northeast Regional Biotechnology Symposium, held March 10 on the Providence campus.
Bush said the issue is “not insurmountable,” and more employees have become available because of staffing changes at companies such as Pfizer, which recently made a decision to outsource some work previously done by employees.
But the gap between jobs available and employees has been created in part because of the rapid growth of companies such as Amgen, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturing companies. Just in Rhode Island, the company has added hundreds of jobs; it currently employs 1,300 people.
The other reason for the lack of available workers, Bush said, is training.
When he first entered the industry, Bush said, people were taught standard operating procedures and then learned on the job. Now, companies like Amgen seek people who have a background in science and relevant education and experience, he said.
Part of the effort to provide skilled workers for companies in the state is being handled by the university, said Greg Paquette, director of biotechnology programs at URI.
Based on the school’s Providence campus, the full-time Biotechnology Manufacturing Program has aimed, since it opened in 2003, to give students a comprehensive knowledge of the industry and an opportunity for internships, which could result in employment.
A separate graduate course offered through the school’s Clinical Laboratory Science program focuses on the “front end of the business,” Paquette said.
Thus far, the school has graduated 50 students from the manufacturing program and 100 from the graduate program. Twenty-six students are currently enrolled in the undergraduate program.
A separate program, created by the Workforce Partnership of Greater Rhode Island and the R.I. Tech Collective, has operated since January 2004: the R.I. Bio-manufacturing/Biotechnology Training Initiative, financed by a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor and geared to meeting specific companies’ needs.
According to Bush, programs such as the training initiative and URI’s undergraduate courses help people get into an important part of the industry.
“Manufacturing in biotech is really, in my mind, the best place to start in the industry,” Bush said. “You get exposure to every single aspect of it.”
This was the second annual biotech symposium on URI’s Providence campus. Designed to facilitate interaction between local companies, the event included participation from Ion Signature Technology Inc., NABsys, Afferent Corp., Neurotech USA Inc., Concordia Manufacturing LLC and Multicell Technologies Inc.
“The biotech community in the state is somewhat disjointed,” Paquette said. “We don’t really have much of a sense of it. … That’s one of the reasons we’re sponsoring this workshop.”
Paquette also said the biotech industry in Rhode Island has gained momentum of late, with companies looking to move to the state. Most recently, Bristol-Myers Squibb, the country’s fifth-largest drug maker, said it’s considering building a $660 million plant in Rhode Island – a sign, Paquette said, that the state is gaining appeal for big companies.
