FRENCH DRUGMAKER Sanofi scaled back planned layoffs under pressure from the French government, which has been struggling to contain a burgeoning unemployment rate.
Sanofi, France’s second largest company by market value after Total, said it could shed about 900 jobs in France in the next three years – fewer than the 2,500 predicted in July by trade unions – as part of the company’s planned reshuffle of its research operations.
The French government, which had strongly criticised Sanofi’s cutback plans amid rising unemployment and similar plans by troubled car maker PSA Peugeot Citroen, said it had made Sanofi chief executive Christopher Viehbacher listen to reason.
French industry minister Arnaud Montebourg told reporters Sanofi had “followed the government’s recommendations” after a meeting on Monday evening, where the company initially offered to shrink its plan to 1,370 layoffs from an initial figure of 2,300.
Montebourg said he asked Sanofi to further reduce that number.
“A company that’s earning money cannot behave like a company in trouble,” Montebourg told journalists. “After a meeting with the CEO, whom I saw again last night, I explained that this layoff plan was abusive and that it needed to be reduced, which has been done in two waves.”
Sanofi’s plan, first mooted in early July, attracted the wrath of French politicians, with Montebourg calling the layoffs “unacceptable” and Pierre Cohen, mayor of the southern town of Toulouse which faced about 600 layoffs at a research centre, labelling the company’s top management “gangsters.
Sanofi aims to achieve the 900 cuts through early retirement, voluntary redundancies and redeploying people within the company, it said yesterday. The group added it does not plan to move any of its sites or reduce the number of industrial locations it has in France. The future of its cancer research centre in Toulouse, however, remains uncertain.
Sanofi said it had found potential stakeholders to maintain operations at the site and it would strive to find “concrete solutions” in coming months.
