Contacts are being made with other pharmaceutical companies in an attempt to redeploy employees which Baxter Malta Limited is planning to lay off, according to a General Workers’ Union section secretary.
Jason Deguara told The Times that several other pharmaceutical companies were “receptive” to the idea of taking on employees being laid off by the end of the year.
He said the companies knew of the benefits of employing these people who were already fully trained and had the necessary expertise required for the job.
Top medical equipment manufacturer Baxter Malta Limited informed the union on Thursday of its plans to lay off 97 of its 600 employees by the end of the year as part of a restructuring programme, which will see many of its production lines moving to Tunisia.
The union was told the company intends to dismiss 83 production staff and 14 others at management level.
Over the past months, the company has been looking into the possibility of relocating the majority of its production lines to Tunisia due to cheaper wages, resulting in lower unit costs, according to sources.
The union section secretary said names of the people who are to be laid off have not been mentioned although an exercise is under way to finalise this, according to the last-in first-out principle prescribed by law.
He said although the union was treating this mass redundancy collectively, efforts were being made to identify the skills of each individual for redeployment purposes.
Baxter Malta Ltd is a subsidiary of the parent company based in Illinois, US. It manufactures disposable medical products, medical devices, plasma proteins, intravenous solutions and products for peritoneal dialysis.
In Malta, Baxter started operations in 1977 as a joint venture between the Malta Development Corporation and a French group of companies, Dubernard Hospital until it was acquired by Baxter International Inc in 1988.
The Maltese facility now designs, manufactures and supplies a very broad range of sterile, disposable medical devices.
It produces more than 60 million sets annually, 80 per cent of which are sold in Europe.