Parexel to lay off up to 125 transferred GSK employees

Beginning Sept. 30, Massachusetts-based CRO (contract research organization) Parexel will lay off as many as 125 of the 450 employees it brought on from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in North Carolina late last year, according to a North Carolina WARN report obtained by Outsourcing-Pharma.com.

A Parexel spokeswoman told us the layoffs are tied to its Research Triangle Park, NC, Sanders Building location, and they come nearly a month after Parexel said it would fire as many as 850 employees in total.

The WARN report notes that the 125 to be laid off includes 14 clinical monitoring associates, 13 project leaders and 10 project directors. Some of the other positions are listed below:

ParexelLayoffs.png

The 850 layoffs are expected to cost the company between $30m and $40m in employee separation benefits, the company reported in an SEC filing.

Parexel CEO Josef von Rickenbach, who spoke with us at DIA in mid-June, said at the time that the GSK employees the service provider brought in would all be coming with work, and he didn’t mention any layoffs.

GSK previously notified the department that it was laying off 180 beginning June 1, according to a different WARN notice. Back in 2010, GSK signed up Parexel as one of two CRO strategic partners, alongside PPD.

A local media outlet on Wednesday said in a report on the layoffs that a “former Parexel/GSK worker who recently left the firm for another job has remained in contact with former co-workers said colleagues had ‘confirmed’ that ‘a couple hundred people do all have their 5 [minute] meetings in person today with Parexel [human resources] in the Sanders building where we have been working (on GSK's campus) to find out their futures.’”

Parexel will have a chance to discuss the layoffs further in its quarterly earnings report next Wednesday.