Teva Takes Back a few Job Cuts

After two weeks of protest in Israel, generics giant Teva has temporarily taken back about a third of the planned job cuts at its plant in Jerusalem.

Original plans called for 340 positions to be eliminated at the tableting facility, but the drugmaker has extended 140 of the redundancies to 2019, when it plans to cease production there.

Altogether, Teva announced shortly before Christmas that it would eliminate 1,750 positions in Israel and 14,000 globally as it seeks to reduce its staggering debt burden resulting from the mismanaged Allergan acquisition.

In a statement released at the beginning of the new year, the company said it has been “conducting an intense process of consultation with the unions” and has managed to find other jobs for some of the workers, so that the number of layoffs could be smaller. It was unclear whether the new jobs would be within the company or elsewhere.

Teva’s new CEO, Kåre Schultz, said earlier the tablets currently produced in Jerusalem can be made at a third of the price in eastern Europe.

Along with the strikes that shut down the Jerusalem plant and interrupted operations at institutions throughout the country, Israel’s government has also put pressure on the drugmaker to cut jobs in other countries rather than at home. International observer said this week that Teva’s new management may have underestimated the resistance the plans would face across Israeli.

This is not the first time Teva has faced massive protest after plans to cut its local workforce, as Israeli news reports pointed out. An attempt to cut 5,000 jobs in 2013 was thwarted by employees and the company’s board of directors.