WEST GREENWICH – In a letter to workers, Amgen Inc. (Nasdaq: AMGN) yesterday announced plans to lay off 1,500 U.S. workers, nearly a third of them in Rhode Island, as part of the restructuring announced last month.
“The notification by the CEO [Kevin Sharer] wasn’t just to Rhode Island workers, it was to all Amgen staff,” Larry Bernard, a spokesman for the Amgen operations in Cambridge, Mass., and West Greenwich, told Providence Business News in an e-mail interview today. The cuts will affect workers in every sector, including research and administration, he confirmed.
The California-based pharmaceutical manufacturer “needs to reduce its work force by 1,500 people nationwide – with about 30 percent of that coming [in] 450 or more layoffs from the West Greenwich facility, where employment has run as high as 1,700. On Aug. 15, Amgen said it planned to trim its work force by 2,200 to 2,600 jobs – 12 to 14 percent – over the next two years as part of a restructuring that aims to save more than $1 billion in 2008 alone. At the time, the company said it had 1,600 employees in the Ocean State, or about 8 percent of its total payroll of more than 20,000 workers. (READ MORE; a longer article is available to subscribers only)
Since then, Bernard confirmed, 700 employees nationwide have accepted a buyout offer from the company, agreeing to leave by Nov. 16. Amgen has not disclosed how many of its Rhode Island staff accepted the buyout.
The company has invested more than $1 billion in its West Greenwich facility, which this month was ranked No. 6 among large employers in the PBN’s Best Places to Work in Rhode Island 2007 awards. (READ MORE)
Now, Kimball Hall, the vice president in charge of Rhode Island operations, said, it is planning to close the older of the two plants at the site. The original West Greenwich plant, called BioNow, could be shut down by the end of the year, Bernard confirmed. “But we will still have a large manufacturing capability here, and we’re still committed to Rhode Island and to the site,” he told PBN last month.
The job cuts, the first in the company’s 27-year history, have been blamed on slowing sales of the anemia drug Aranesp, Amgen’s biggest money maker.
Amgen Inc. (Nasdaq: AMGN) – based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., with operations in 10 other U.S. locations, including West Greenwich – is a biotechnology company focusing on the development and production of new medicines for human use. Additional information is available at www.amgen.com.
