They are workers, but the pharmaceutical multinationals have treated them like waste. Technically waste: the kind that, when you give it to a landfill, you also have to pay the landfill for the disturbance. And this is what happened with Marvecspharma Service Srl, which went bankrupt on 14 January 2011 with debts of 160 million euros, despite being the holder of ministerial authorizations for the marketing of medicines such as «Folina» and «Eparina vister» . Since 2004 he had begun to acquire legions of scientific representatives sold at symbolic prices (one thousand euros or ) as a business unit by multinationals who also paid Marvecs substantial sums as badwill. In 2004, for example, 242 employees at Pharmacia Italia Spa which also paid 30 million euros in negative goodwill; 199 employees in 2005 from Pfizer Italia which also puts 26 million on the plate; 442 employees in 2007 again from Pfizer Italia with an additional 60 million; and then 90 employees from Simesa Spa and 70 from AstraZeneca Spa in 2007. But why was Marvecs swelled with workers (up to 1,200) if for investigating judge Enrico Manzi it was "without industrial projects" and "already with budgets in disarray"? It was "totally inadequate to achieve any business objective" , but the personnel acquisitions "were justified only by the utility deriving from the payment of badwill to buffer the growing debt" , and with "the aim of benefiting, in the immediate future, from the liquidity paid as advances on the monthly payments and on the severance pay for each worker hired». A run-up to debt that resulted in fraudulent bankruptcy has now resulted in the arrest of the directors Nicola and Francesco Danzo by the GdF of Milan. "The workers - summarizes the investigating judge - were only a cost for the sellers, important and well-known pharmaceutical companies which, as a result of the sales to Marvecs, collected a symbolic price (one thousand euros) by paying the transferee an economic contribution to acquire them, thus "freeing" them from a problem". The prosecutors Luigi Orsi and Gaetano Ruta add that "the examination of the profiles of responsibility of the multinationals is still under investigation: it is also evident that these transfers were functional to the dismissal of a large number of workers without having to follow the procedures envisaged in the management of redundancies". Employees "unloaded like dead weight and even violated in their basic rights to have their social security contributions paid". July 23, 2011 – Daily
NOTE: The Ministry of Labor and Social Policies is the dicastery of the Italian Government, which deals with the functions pertaining to the State in the field of labor policy and employment development, job protection and the adequacy of the social security system and social policies, with particular reference to prevention and reduction of the conditions of need and hardship of the people of the families. Arranges labor inspections and control over the discipline of the subordinate and self-employment relationship (from Wikipedia)
