St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) is about to hand out more than 270 pink slips to employees at a facility in Sylmar, Calif., according to a notice filed with the state’s Employment Development Dept.
The layoffs are part of a reorganization effort announced in January which also affects sites in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Plano, Texas, a St. Jude spokeswoman told MassDevice.com today. The cuts eliminate positions primarily in the company’s manufacturing and research & development operations as St. Jude merges its two operating divisions into one organization, integrating manufacturing and supply chain operations worldwide.
"To optimize plant operations in Sylmar, we eliminated the second manufacturing shift," St. Jude spokeswoman Micki Sievwright said. "The result is that we will continue to operate one manufacturing shift during normal business hours, and also expand this shift to absorb some of the production demand."
Terminated 2nd-shift employees may also apply for open spots on the 1st shift, Sievwright noted.
The Sylmar plant produces St. Jude’s implantable cardiac rhythm devices, including the Durata defibrillators leads. The facility just landed a clean bill of health following a year-long FDA probe over quality control and documentation issues cited in a 2012 site inspection.
FDA inspections in the fall of 2012 at the Sylmar facility turned up 11 problems with quality control and documentation procedures. The FDA’s warning letter followed a Form 483 issued to the St. Paul, Minn.-based medical device company immediately after the inspections. St. Jude announced earlier this month that all issues cited in that warning letter had been taken care of.
