Pfizer to cut 680 jobs in Collegeville and Great Valley

What has been expected since Pfizer Inc. bought rival Wyeth in October is now becoming reality: local layoffs.

Pfizer gave formal notice today that it plans to cut a total of 680 jobs from a combined workforce of 4,500 at its Collegeville and Great Valley campuses, where Wyeth had major operations.

Spokeswoman Gwen Fisher said 450 of the layoffs will come from Collegville, and the other 230 from Great Valley. They will take effect March 12.

The announcement was met with a swift expression of "disappointment" from State Sen. Andy Dinniman, who, along with other area legislators, had been pushing Pfizer to limit any post-merger job eliminations.

"We did not expect that the layoffs would be as great as they turned out to be," Dinniman said in an interview.

Some employees were informed of their pending job terminations today and Thursday in "face-to-face" meetings with managers, Fisher said. Official letters will be mailed to all affected employees Monday, she said.

Each will qualify for a separation package that will include severance payments, continued medical benefits and help finding a new job, Fisher said.

Today's announcement was made in order for Pfizer to be in compliance with the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which ensures that workers get adequate notice of a layoff.

Though Pfizer had already stated it publicly in the past, it also gave official notice yesterday that it intends to close the Wyeth office campus in Great Valley by the middle of this year.

What will happen to the jobs there is not certain. Some of the remaining 670 employees after the March layoffs could be transferred to other Pfizer facilities, including Collegeville, Fisher said.

"This is a fluid situation," she emphasized.

It also is not likely to be the last of Pfizer layoffs locally, Fisher acknowledged. Pfizer had said that after it made the $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth, it intended to cut 15 percent of its global workforce of 130,000 - or roughly 20,000 jobs.

It is a process a number of pharmaceutical companies are struggling with in what is a particularly difficult period for the industry. Many are facing patent expirations with no powerhouse drugs in the pipeline to replace them.

Together, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Johnson&Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. have announced more than 40,000 cuts in the last several months.

Fisher said she was not certain whether Pfizer has hired a broker to find a buyer or tenant for the Great Valley campus, located along Morehall Road in East Whiteland Township.

On it are nearly 500,000 square feet of space in two high-end office buildings constructed between 2001 and 2003, said Jim Dugan, a suburban office specialist at broker Grubb & Ellis Co. They housed Wyeth's worldwide information technology center, Dugan said. The site is also approved for two additional buildings of 185,000 square feet each, he said.

In a market that already has more commercial office space than is needed, Pfizer will probably "have to broaden their marketing efforts to groups outside the area" to find a buyer, Dugan said. And still the road might be tough, given the tight credit environment.

"There's not many lenders that want to lend to an investor to buy a vacant property in today's market," Dugan said.

For Collegeville, Pfizer has "a strong commitment," Fisher said. That campus will serve, among other things, as the leadership center for Pfizer's specialty care business unit, she said.

"We are not becoming a ghost town by any stretch of the imagination," Fisher said.