Another company blocked all day, trucks waiting outside the gates, with 250 workers on strike, with flags and choirs. It happened on Friday morning, from 8, at Sanofi-Aventis, the pharmaceutical company of Origgio which has been producing the well-known Maalox for 25 years and for some years too the Enterogermina. The protest came later the presentation of ownership of the new business plan which provides for the downsizing of the Origgio plant, with the discontinuation of Maalox production and the consequent relocation of more than 130 employees in the Scoppito plant, in Abruzzo.
The employees are not there, they folded their arms and blocked the entrance to the company on via Europa. For many of them it is impossible to move the whole family, it would mean giving up work at a time when the entire industrial fabric is in full crisis. ?But above all, unions and workers, do not understand the strategy of ownership (which matters six factories throughout Italy with a total of 3,400 employees). «The company is not in an economic crisis – he explains Maurice Ferrari of the Femca-Cisl -. They were there last year profits of 176 million euros and the pharmaceutical sector is not suffering. The decision to relocate is only for a question of profits. In this way, however, the workers and the social fabric pay the price of a territory like that of Varese which is in a severe crisis». ?
«The owners made this choice only for economic reasons – continues Ermanno Donghi of the CGIL -. This shift does not make sense, especially when you consider that in the presentation of the plan 
industrial have decided to invest 9 million euros in Origgio for the production of Enterogermina. But this will bring jobs to 95 people. And the others? Who can't move? Plus all the millions invested in the past few years to make this company the central hub of Maalox production, have they been thrown away?».
Furthermore, Ferrari also addresses an ethical issue: «The company has also made a pact with the workers in the past, it must not think only from an economic and profit point of view. The value of a business is not based on this alone but on the social impact it brings, on the well-being of its workers».
The situation it is now at a standstill. After the strike the workers will return to the company and the unions have asked a meeting with the ministry to force the owner, a French multinational, to review the plan. “We also asked the Province to intervene – conclude the unions -, because the situation in Varese is at risk and this situation at Sanofi can be avoided, the repercussions on the territory would be dramatic, also for related industries".
The times for are still long because to move the production of a drug it takes some bureaucracy
