Roche will lay off 300-400 product development positions

Zurich (Reuters)-Roche plans to lay off 300-400 employees at the product development (PD) site this year, according to company executives, including chief medical officer Levi Garraway, in an employee video call with Swiss newspaper Blick.

“We made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce in PD by about 5-7% by the end of this year,” Garaway said in a conference call. “This is equivalent to affecting 300 to 400 characters worldwide.”

Roche has 101,000 employees worldwide.

The Basel-based company confirmed that it had conducted a video call and said in a statement that it would work with all employees to help alleviate the blow caused by unemployment.

It has a product development base, and its employees’ responsibilities include conducting clinical research on prospective drugs from research projects in Switzerland, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Canada.

Roche’s manager said in the video call that the affected jobs include business support positions, including project management, project delivery, learning and development, business management, coaching and administrative support.

From August to October, people who are unemployed due to unemployment will be notified, first to British employees, and secondly to employees elsewhere. A human resources manager said in the video that their work will stop in early November.

Felix Arellano, head of global drug safety, said in a recording obtained by the newspaper: “This is the hardest thing I have done since I was at Roche.” “Obviously, we take it very seriously. this matter.”

Roche’s 2020 net profit is 15.1 billion Swiss francs (16.3 billion US dollars), as the pandemic diagnostic method has driven down drug sales.

The company’s statement stated that to develop its business to adapt to changes requires “re-prioritization of work,” which “may lead to the unfortunate cancellation of positions.”

(1 US dollar = 0.9254 Swiss francs)