BMS Closes Another Puerto Rican Manufacturing Plant
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Bristol-Myers Squibb announced today that it will close a 37-year-old pill manufacturing plant in the city of Barceloneta in Puerto Rico. The company plans to shut down operations at the facility over the next 12 months, eliminating about 225 jobs. The reasons for the closing were slowing demand for drugs manufactured at the facility, including two AIDS treatments and an antibiotic and a general need to cut corporate manufacturing costs. As you may recall, Bristol-Myers recently announced a restructuring to eliminate 4,300 jobs and save $1.5 billion.
This is the second time in the past few months that Bristol-Myers has announced plans to close a Puerto Rican production plant. Last October, BMS announced that it intended to close a manufacturing facility in Mayaguez that made Pravachol (cholesterol-lowering), the Abilify (schizophrenia) and Glucophage (diabetes) that cost 400 employees their jobs. Not to worry–the company said it will continue to operate two other plants in the Puerto Rican cities of Humacao and Manati. About 3,000 high-paying pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs have been lost in Puerto Rico over the past year–given this growing trend, I think that the Puerto Rican government ought to begin to worry about its economic future.
Until next time….
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (try China, India and Singapore)
It is unfortunate that the Puerto Rico government is more concern about the political games than they are about the economic future and well being of the people in the island. Something needs to be done before a mass exodus of working professionals and intellectual capital of the island occurs.