Employees of the Geneva plant want to prevent its closure
GENEVA – Employees of the Merck Serono plant in Geneva today decided to continue the fight for the preservation of jobs in the pharmaceutical industry and better protection of employees. A biotechnology research support association was created.
Only a few employees accepted the relocation to Darmstadt (Germany), Boston, Beijing and the Vaud sites proposed by the company's management for 750 of them. "So far between 110 and 120 people have agreed to move to the canton of Vaud, sixty to Boston and about ten to Darmstadt", indicated the Line Gross personnel delegate, adding that others could still follow "but according to our indications they will not be more than hundred".
The representative of the Unia trade union, Alessandro Pelizzari, said that the agreement signed a month ago with the management on the social level has made it possible to obtain improvements, but the main objective of the mobilization, to prevent the closure of the site, has not been achieved . The plant will be definitively abandoned at the beginning of 2013.
Meanwhile, about twenty cyclists left the Merck Serono headquarters to reach Bern next Monday. Then the group will continue towards Basel and Strasbourg. The participants intend to address the Swiss and European political authorities as well as the pharmaceutical industry in the Rhineland.
14.09.2012 – 12:47 
