Sizable effort forming to help Mylan workers

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The clock is ticking for the employees at the Morgantown generic drug manufacturing facility now owned by Viatris, a Pfizer company.

At the end of July, about 1,500 workers at the Chestnut Ridge Road facility will no longer have a job as the Morgantown facility becomes part of the Viatris efforts to cut $1 billion in costs by 2024. According to a press release the company plans to realize a significant portion of the cuts by 2022.

President and CEO of the Morgantown Area Partnership, Russ Rogerson is part of a wide cross section of community members that are working to find new jobs and relief for workers impacted by the sudden closure announcement.

“As an economic developer and what we’re doing for the community- we’re working full-time on trying to continue to build the economy,” Rogerson said,” When something like this happens we need to step it up and get in gear.”

Of the 1,500 workers, about 875 are members of the United Steel Workers Union.

“Providing assistance to the employees who are impacted, working with the company and others in the community to try to drive as much assistance to them as possible,” Rogerson said,” It’s a matter of rolling your sleeves up and getting to it.”

The announcement came just weeks before Christmas and was a shock to most. Rogerson says the time to act is now.

“There’s not a lot of time to feel sorry for yourself,” Rogerson said,” You have to step in and get busy to start working toward doing the best you can to minimize the impact.”

On WAJR’s Talk of the Town Rogerson said some announcements are planned for the month of January that provide relief or opportunity to the workers.

“We’ve been working on diversifying our economy and we continue to work on that,” Rogerson said,” There are some seeds planted with some companies and projects we’re looking at as we speak that play a role in that.”

“We’re going to have a lot of facets and a lot of people involved to help those employees and try to replace those jobs and bring additional opportunities to the community.”