MILAN – One in four. Out of over 2,400 employees, the request for an extraordinary redundancy fund procedure for 569. "A recovery plan to recover efficiency - reads the note released by the Italian Sigma-Tau Industrie Farmaceutiche Riunite (founded in '57 by the chemist Claudio Cavazza who died a short time ago) - by virtue of the will of the company and the shareholders not to delocalise production and research". Epicenter of the dispute: the headquarters and plant in Pomezia, in the province of Rome. A flagship of Made in Italy (it is still controlled by the Cavazza family) which decides it can no longer guarantee business continuity except at the price of a temporary layoff procedure for most of its employees.
THE REASONS – Sources inside the group say (673 million euros in turnover in 2010) – the basis of the crisis is a structural change in the pharmaceutical market, such as to have already brought other multinationals in the sector to their knees. First of all, the successful generalization of some drugs produced by Sigma-Tau at the expiry of the patents and above all the progressive reduction of public health expenditure, which would have thus reduced the room for maneuver and compressed profits. Above all, it is also a wake-up call for the 400 researchers (in a group that invests 16% of its turnover in research and development), even if from Pomezia they are quick to throw water on the fire by arguing that the employees receiving the layoff period will be agreed with the trade unions and for now it is not known which company functions will be most affected by the reorganization plan.
THE SICKNESS – On the trade union front, however, discontent is spreading. The internal RSU also points the finger at "the assignments and external consultancy bestowed by the group's management in the hypothesis - feared before the summer - of a listing on the Stock Exchange". And the union representatives even call into question the founder Claudio, who certainly would not have approved this downsizing operation, "in view of a company sale". Certainly only two years ago - when he was still at the helm - Sigma-Tau had even acquired the Indianapolis plant of the American Enzon (for over 300 million dollars) by jumping into the segment of anti-cancer drugs thanks also to a financing line granted by Intesa Sanpaolo (which was already present in the capital of Sigma-Tau). Now the vocation for internationalization collides with a profound crisis on the domestic market.
