GSK laying off another 180 workers in RTP
Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is laying off another 180 workers at its Research Triangle Park Campus.
The job cuts, which are in addition to a previously announced round of layoffs, were disclosed Monday in a letter to the state Department of Commerce. Employees affected by the latest layoffs already have been notified, said spokeswoman Mary Anne Rhyne.
The new layoffs impact GSK’s commercial business and include sales, managerial, marketing and support staff jobs.
In December GSK announced that it was eliminating about 900 research-and-development jobs in RTP throughout 2015. However, about half of those employees were offered jobs at Parexel, a contract research organization that helps drug companies conduct clinical trials of experimental drugs and analyze the results.
The employees who shifted to Parexel are still working at GSK’s campus. Parexel has leased one of the drug company’s buildings, Rhyne said.
Both rounds of layoffs are part of a $1.6 billion, three-year cost-cutting effort that GSK announced in October.
GSK didn’t disclose the commercial job cuts when it announced the R&D reductions because, at that time, it hadn’t determined how many commercial workers would be affected, Rhyne said.
Prior to the initiation of the layoffs, London-based GSK employed about 5,000 workers in the Triangle – 4,500 at its North American headquarters in RTP and 500 at its manufacturing plant in Zebulon.
GSK’s sales fell 5 percent overall in the fourth quarter, with U.S. sales declining 10 percent. Intense global competition and cheaper generic drugs are among the forces hurting GSK and other drugmakers.
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This story was originally published March 23, 2015 at 6:22 PM with the headline "GSK laying off another 180 workers in RTP."