WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Pfizer Slashing Hundreds of Jobs in New York's North Country

Pfizer Slashing Hundreds of Jobs in New York's North Country

Rouses, Point, New York - November 9, 2009

Municipal officials say the North Country of New York will lose 600 jobs when drug giant Pfizer closes 3 research & develop labs in Rouses Point, Chazy, and Plattsburgh. A Pfizer spokesman tells WCAX News the number is closer to 400. No matter how you count it, it's bad news for the region.

Mayor George Rivers of Rouses Point sighs, "It floored me. It absolutely floored me."

Rivers learned Monday morning that the research and development facility Pfizer got in Rouses Point as part of its buyout of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals would close. "We're certainly not going to sit still," he says. "We didn't when Wyeth made the announcement they were going to close, and we won't with this. We'll put an economic development team together and work, if we have to, to market the plant."

The world's largest drug maker says the move is part of a 15% company-wide consolidation of research & development work. Pfizer says 300 people work in Chazy, and 70 in Plattsburgh and Rouses Point. But leaders including Mayor Rivers believe the actual numbers are higher. That worries the owner of Sultan Sunoco, who estimates traffic from the Rouses Point plant is half of his snack & gas business.

Chaudary Khan says, "I'm pretty nervous, like everybody else is. I'm a small business owner and I would like to have more people and jobs in there. I know people who bought houses close to their jobs and are now trying to sell their house."

Another drug company, Akrimax, is using drug manufacturing space at the former Wyeth facility in Rouses Point. That's separate from the Pfizer research side and Akrimax says it is still moving forward with growing its business there.

We talked to a worker at the Rouses Point R & D lab who was shocked to learn he'd lose his job after 31 years. He did not want to go on camera but said the cuts will start in February and take several months to phase out. Pfizer tells us the facilities in Plattsburgh and Rouses Point will close next year, with the Chazy lab closing by 2011.

Mayor George Rivers has called an emergency meeting with the region's representatives in Albany and hopes to get help from Senators Schumer and Gillibrand as well as newly-elected Congressman Bill Owens to help bring jobs to the North Country. We've seen it before though, that many of the major job losses never seem to come back.

Jack Thurston - WCAX News