Wyeth Inc.”™s 3,000 workers at its Pearl River facility may have begun worrying the day Pfizer Inc. announced it had bought out its pharmaceutical competition for $68 billion.
Since October 2009, more than 600 jobs have been cut. On May 18, the company announced that it will stop all manufacturing in Pearl River by 2014, eliminating more than 1,200 positions.
The loss of nearly 2,000 jobs in Rockland is devastating to both workers and the small businesses that rely on them, said Ron Hicks, president of the Rockland County Economic Development Corp.
Hicks, who had just welcomed Alteris Renewables to New City, is now faced with the task of finding tenants for Pfizer”™s Pearl River site.
Pfizer announced plans to restructure its operations once it became the world”™s largest pharmaceutical manufacturer and says it is cutting more than 6,000 jobs worldwide. Outsourcing manufacturing jobs to countries where the pay scale is minimal and workers are abundant has been an ongoing trend in the U.S., with more than 5 million manufacturing jobs going overseas in the past decade.
“Many of the jobs being lost today will never come back,” said Al Samuels, president of the RBA, prior to Pfizer”™s announcement. “Many of the people in those jobs aren”™t trained to do anything else. They”™ll end up taking lower-paying jobs or try to retrain for different positions, but competition is extraordinary because of the recession. For people over 50, it is going to be a challenge to find work.”
Pfizer”™s Pearl River facility will retain some of its research and development components, but by 2014 there will be just one-third of the company”™s original employees remaining on site.
