Fifty-six manufacturing jobs at Cardinal Health in Orange County will be heading south by December. It will be joined by an identical number of employees at Pfizer in Rockland.
Those Cardinal workers affected were in the department that manufactured prepackaged kits for hospitals, according to Carmen Clinton, senior consultant in human resources.
“We have two other plants located down south with upgraded systems that can handle the packaging,” Clinton said. “It would cost too much to upgrade the current facility in this economy.”
The company has spoken with employees who are expected to be laid off by Dec. 31 and worked out severance packages based on years of service, Clinton said. Many of them were longtime Cardinal employees.
The company, which employs 400 people in Montgomery, has already had a rapid response team come in from the New York State Department of Labor to talk to those affected.
“If the employees want to move to the areas where the packaging is going to be done, there is a job for them there,” Clinton said. “We will still have 340 jobs here at the Neelytown Road location and those who are scheduled for the layoff can go into another area of the company if a job opens up and they are interested. They will be considered first.”
Cardinal”™s announcement on July 15 was followed by another layoff announcement July 19 by Pfizer in Pearl River. It will be reducing the same number of employees by October, as a result of company restructuring. Pfizer bought Wyeth Laboratories, one of Rockland”™s largest employers, in 2009.
Ron Hicks, president of the Rockland Economic Development Corp., is working with Pfizer to retrofit vacant space for other pharmaceutical companies in the former Wyeth facility. Pfizer said it has plans to make focus on research and development at the Pearl River location, which could ultimately create more jobs for those with different skill sets, Hicks said in an earlier interview with HV Biz.
