November 4, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
WALLINGFORD, Conn. – Bristol-Myers Squibb Company will terminate between 52 and 78 employees from its Research Parkway facility in Wallingford, Conn. between Dec. 31 and March 1, 2016, as the company continues its move to hubs in centers of pharmaceutical innovation, the New Haven Register reported this morning.
On Oct. 27, the pharmaceutical giant filed a WARN notice with the state labor department as well as with local officials in Wallingford notifying them of the layoffs. Under federal law, companies are required to file the WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notes prior to layoffs or the closing of a facility. In June, Bristol Myers announced plans to shutter the 982,000 square foot research and development facility by 2018. When the company announced the plant closing, Bristol-Myers said about 100 employees would be terminated by the end of the year. When the plant is closed, more than 500 workers will have been laid off or relocated, the Register reported. Some of those will be relocated to a new, but undisclosed, location in Connecticut.
Of those employees receiving pink slips, Bristol-Myers spokesperson Tracy Smith told the New Haven Register that 19 of the employees have been offered other positions in the company. The majority of the employees being laid off are research scientists, but some upper management was also included, the Register reported.
The layoffs are part of Bristol-Myers’ move to create hubs in areas of innovation. In June, Bristol-Myers announced it will relocate hundreds of workers to a new central research hub in Cambridge, Mass. which will open in 2018. In June, Sarah Koenig, a Bristol-Myers spokesperson, told BioSpace the employees who would be immediately impacted by layoffs were associated with the company’s Discovery Virology division, research into early-stage viruses and viral disease. Bristol-Myers anticipated ceasing the Discovery virology programs by the end of 2015 or early 2016. The workers set to be laid off via the virology cuts are primarily focused on researching diseases such as hepatitis B and HIV.
The new site in Cambridge, which has been exploding as the biotech hub of the eastern United States, will focus primarily on research and development. Being in the greater Boston area will put the researchers and scientists in the facility within a few miles of a plethora of other pharmaceutical companies as well as noted academic research facilities. Francis Cuss, chief science officer at Bristol-Myers, said the hub in Cambridge would put company researchers “in the heart of vibrant ecosystems of world class science, innovation and business opportunities, which offer ideal environments for fostering external collaboration.”
“Ultimately, our goal is to continue to accelerate the translation of scientific knowledge and insights into the next wave of potentially transformational medicines for patients with serious diseases,” Cuss said in June.
In addition to the Cambridge site, Bristol-Myers said it planned to open another hub in the San Francisco area to focus on immune-oncology.
