Israeli medicine-making giant to fire half local workforce

JERUSALEM, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries plans to fire 3,000 local employees due to shutdown of partial operations, Israeli media Globes said Wednesday.

Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries will close down most of its production operations in Israel, and fire at least 3,000 local employees out of its workforce of nearly 7,000, the report said.

The heads of all Teva workers committees met Wednesday, saying they had not been briefed about the details of the company's planned cutbacks.

They were waiting for the chairperson of Histadrut, or General Federation of Labor in Israel, Avi Nissenkorn's meeting with the company's management on Thursday, said the report.

The Israeli media said that Histadrut called a half-day general strike for Sunday against mass layoffs planned by Teva.

Teva, the world's largest generic medicine-maker, now has 57,000 employees worldwide, including 10,000 in the United States, 24,000 in Europe, and 6,800 in Israel, accounting for 12 percent of its total workforce.

It is reported that Teva is considering cutting 10,000 jobs worldwide in the next two years, with the aim of saving the company 1.5-2 billion dollars.

The company's debt totals 35 billion dollars, after the 40 billion dollars acquisition of Allergan's generics business Actavis Generics in August 2016, Israeli media Harretz reported. Enditem