Let Them Eat Cake...

Occupy Phoni - The Executives Strike Back...

Following the announcement of job losses across Europe and the US, many of Phoni's sites have been hit by protests.
Thousands of workers and their supporters have gathered at Phoni sites throughout the world, demanding that Phoni reconsider plans to cut costs by shipping manufacturing and R&D to China, India and Indonesia.

These protests are a symptom of increasing popular disenchantment with the social upheaval caused by the closure of first world industries by global corporations in pursuit of easy money in low cost countries.

Phoni executives appear to be unrepentant, however. Many of the protesters have been given a pamphlet, allegedly written by a senior Phoni executive, that bluntly sets out the rationale for the impending site closures.

The Nether Wallop Reporter reproduces it here:

"We are Phoni. It’s our job to make money out of medicines. Whether it’s prescription drugs, consumer healthcare, diagnostics or generics, it doesn’t matter. We would trade cough sweets if it were profitable. And we do. I didn’t hear anyone complaining when our share price hit $50 and everyone got a huge bonus. Just like gambling, it’s not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the stock market has crapped out, and investors are looking to us to make up the shortfall. They’re looking to squeeze their healthcare stock for everything they can get. It doesn’t matter that we are still making billions a year in profit. Our investors want more. It’s our job to give it to them. And there’s no way we are going to endanger our luxurious lifestyles by helping to preserve yours.

So go ahead and continue to march about, whining and complaining about job losses. Because guess what: it’s you who’ll be losing your jobs, not us. We get paid millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars a year. We get to retire at 55 with a huge pension and a golden handshake. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.

For years, you manufacturing workers and research scientists have been loyally working away, developing and making new drugs. We were too busy making colossal amounts of money out of your efforts to really notice.

But now we’ve realised we can make even more money by shipping all of our manufacturing and our R&D to the Third World.

So we’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 6 weeks off a year and give them to Indians and Chinese, who’ll gratefully work for a tenth of your salaries. They won’t demand holidays, or sick pay, or paternity leave, or luxurious working environments or fancy restaurants and coffee shops. We can treat them just how we want. They don’t answer back. No unions, no labour laws, no environmental restrictions and no quality regulations. We can save a fortune, and yet still price-gouge national healthcare systems for the products they’ll be making.

So say goodbye to your overtime, and double time and a half, and your comfy well-paid jobs.

We’ll be more than just hitting our numbers for our investors, and getting a massive bonus as a result, thank you very much.

So now that we’re going to be making all of our drugs abroad and have slashed R&D, executives like me will be in trouble in five year’s time when we don’t have any new drugs to market, right?

Wrong! Guess what: we don’t give a flying fuck about five years time. We’ll have all retired by then. When the money dries up, we retire, or get executive positions somewhere else thanks to our old boy network of friends in high places.

The difference is, you live off your salaries, we rejoice in ours. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when we steal the livelihoods of the middle class of Europe and America and send them to the bottom, so that we can cash in now while we can.

We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama and his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? And will they?”


In the real world, it seems that protests about pharma sites closures (see here and here) are doomed to be ineffectual. Our ruling classes are simply and completely without any social conscience whatsoever, it seems...

Hat-tip to PharmaGossip for the Occupy Chicago response...