Marco Malagutti
In the last month, as reported by Il Sole 24 Ore, there has been a trickle. Pfizer, Astrazeneca, Wyeth, Roche, Merck Sharp & Dohme, have announced downsizing of production and workforce. And it doesn't seem to end there. At least a thousand redundancies from pharmaceutical companies have announced reductions in production and the workforce, but by the end of the year they will exceed the 2,500 mark, bringing the cuts to over 5,000 expected in 2 years. Cuts that start from scientific representatives, the weak link in the pharmaceutical chain, and extend to the entire workforce.
The numbers give a clear picture of the situation. AstraZeneca has announced 315 redundancies in Italy between the external force and the Milan office. The reduction in personnel was broken down as follows: 221 employees in the Primary Care sector, 41 in Specialty Care, 5 in the Kam/Ram line, 9 in other roles in the area and 39 in the central office. Then it was the turn of Roche which announced a reorganization which provides for the overall reduction of 82 positions. A provision that does not concern the Monza headquarters, of the Pharma division, nor Roche Diagnostics, the division dedicated to the group's diagnostic products. The precise methods and timing are being defined in consultation with the trade union organisations. And precisely in a meeting with the unions, Ugl Chemists to be precise, Pfizer announced its internal reorganization, a reorganization with significant employment repercussions for drug sales representatives, to date, reports a Pfizer note, cannot be quantified, as it has not yet been defined the industrial development plan. Also Ugl then reported the mobility for 207 Wyeth workers, including scientific representatives of the drug and internal to the Aprilia plant. On the front Merck Sharp & Dohme, the American pharmaceutical multinational, in an international program of personnel cuts, announced in an international program of personnel cuts, the closure of the IRBM P. Angeletti research plant, in Pomezia, which employs over 196 workers. A cascading effect that follows the international wave. The British Glaxo, for example, has announced that by the end of the year it will reduce its sales force in the United States with around a thousand cuts, a reduction equal to 12% which will bring its US employees from 8,500 to 7,500. The causes of the cuts, now evidently exacerbated by the market crisis, are those always evoked: the farewell to blockbuster drugs, the patents that run out and the generics that conquer more and more space and sales. On this last point, however, the intervention of Giorgio Foresti, president of Asso Generici, should be noted, who, commenting on the cuts made or planned by many companies in Italy, declared "The erosion of market shares by generics is described by specialty manufacturers as if it were an unpredictable calamity. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, it is known that the equivalent drug will arrive as far in advance as possible: when the patent is filed, it is known with certainty when it will expire It is therefore not a question of the impossibility of predicting but of the inability to prepare for an expected event. In the life of a product, any product, there comes a time when its economic utility drastically decreases due to the arrival of competitors and the manufacturer prepares the appropriate countermeasures well in advance. Why doesn't this happen in the pharmaceutical sector?". But beyond identifying the culprits, what matters now is finding remedies. The crisis is about to reach the Ministry for Economic Development, with a meeting requested for some time by Farmindustria and by
