About 680 people will be rendered jobless at Novartis’ offices in the US and Switzerland. While 440 roles will be eliminated in Switzerland over the next couple of years, 240 roles will be axed in the US. The Swiss pharmaceuticals firm is looking to trim its development organisation by about 14 per cent. The development division, which is presently 12,500 strong, is responsible for supplying its drugs to the market and also looking after quality assurance, drug regulations and so on.
About 3,000 members of the development division are presently working out of Switzerland, while 2,000 are based out of the US.
These layoffs are in addition to the restructuring exercise at the Basel-based firm, which is expected to see the 78,000-strong workforce being reduced by about 8,000.
In February 2022, Novartis India (NIL) had entered into a sales and distribution agreement with Dr Reddy’s Laboratories for a select range of medicines. Post this development, it had found that certain roles had been rendered redundant, or existed in surplus. Therefore, the company had announced its intentions to let go about 400 of NIL employees.
Novartis India, which is the Indian arm of the Switzerland-based healthcare company, had ended up spending about Rs 75 crore in costs and ex-gratia compensation under the employee separation scheme (ESS). In addition to the severance package, the Company had offered to help the affected employees with outplacement services.
