1400 Union Workers Beg Manchin To Save WV Pharma Plant Outsourcing, Daughter Got $31 Mill Deal [View all]

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- Workers Beg Joe Manchin to Save Pharma Plant as His Daughter Walks Away with $31M. July 28, 2021. Democracy Now! More than 1,400 workers in are set to lose their jobs this week when the Viatris pharmaceuticals plant in Morgantown, WV closes & moves operations overseas to India & Australia. They’ve had no response to their urgent requests for help from their Dem. senator, Joe Manchin, often called the most powerful man in DC. The co. was formed through a merger between 2 pharmaceutical companies, Mylan & Upjohn. Mylan’s chief executive, Manchin’s daughter Heather Bresch, got a $31M payout from the corp. consolidation before the new co. set about cutting costs, incl. closure of the Morgantown plant.

Jos. Gouzd, pres. of United Steelworkers of America Local 8-957 & a worker at the plant, says Viatris has given little reason for the closure except to say the company is looking to “maximize the best interests of the shareholders.” Invest. journalist Katherine Eban says moving pharma. production overseas contradicts the recommendations of many reports on major safety lapses in drug mfg. abroad & lawmakers concern about keeping a key industry within the U.S. “This is pure insanity,” Eban says. “It seems like it is both pharmaceutical & national security suicide to close this plant.”
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- More: 'Joe Manchin Is Ghosting The West Virginia Union Workers Whose Jobs His Daughter Helped Outsource,' Inter Reviewed/Vanity Fair, July 2021,
https://interreviewed.com/joe-manchin-is-ghosting-the-west-virginia-union-workers-whose-jobs-his-daughter-helped-outsource/

On July 31, one of America’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturing plants is scheduled to close. Located on 22 acres in Morgantown, WV, the plant, built in 1965 by longstanding American generics company Mylan Labs., has produced 61 drug products. Its 1,431 highly trained workers – analytical chemists, industrial engineers and senior hygienists among them – are represented by the union of steelworkers. All are expected to be laid off by the end of the month.

The Biden administration has a goal of ramping up domestic pharmaceutical production, & the Morgantown plant is one of a dwindling number of facilities on home soil that produce vital & affordable medicine for the U.S. market. The plant has also lifted hundreds of West Virginia families into the middle class, with the children of its employees going on to become doctors & lawyers.

For years, Mylan’s flagship factory has weathered an industry-wide tsunami of outsourcing even as Western pharmaceutical companies move production capacity abroad, looking for cheaper labor, weaker environmental regulations, & greater distances from the FDA’s keen inspectors. The Morgantown plant is still going strong. Because of the plant’s exemplary inspection record & large scale of operations, the FDA has used it for decades as a training ground for its inspectors.. - More,
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/07/joe-manchin-is-ghosting-the-west-virginia-union-workers | Joe Manchin Is Ghosting the West Virginia Union Workers Whose Jobs His Daughter Helped Outsource