On July 31, one of America’s largest pharmaceutical-manufacturing plants is scheduled to shut its doors.
Set on 22 acres in Morgantown, West Virginia, the plant, built in 1965 by the once-storied American generic-drug company Mylan Laboratories, has made 61 drug products, including a substantial portion of the world’s supply of levothyroxine, a critical thyroid medicine. Its 1,431 highly trained workers—analytical chemists, industrial engineers, and senior janitors among them—are represented by the steelworkers union. All are slated to be laid off by month’s end.
The Biden administration has a stated goal of increasing domestic production of pharmaceuticals, and the Morgantown plant is one of a dwindling number of facilities on home soil that produce vital and 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 and lawyers.
Under Mylan’s cofounder Mike Puskar, employees received free health care and medicine, turkeys on Thanksgiving, Christmas bonuses, and generous wages. “My father walked the plant once a week,” Puskar’s daughter, Johanna, told Vanity Fair. “He knew everyone’s names. He knew their children’s names. He knew their parents’ names.” Puskar died in 2011, nine years after he placed a businessman named Robert J. Coury at the company’s helm.
The new corporate entity, Viatris Inc., was formed in November 2020 when Mylan merged with the Pfizer subsidiary Upjohn. A month later it announced plans to close the Morgantown plant and told the staff it would move most manufacturing to India, and some to Australia, according to a plant employee.
— source vanityfair.com | Katherine Eban | Jul 23, 2021