We are now totally reliant on imports
By Dana Brown
It’s an all too familiar story. A company with some of the best-paying jobs around and a vital anchor for the community decides to engage in “restructuring” to “maximize long-term value creation.”
In other words, it closes down and
lays off its workers in pursuit of bigger profits.
But the late July closure of the
Viatris pharmaceutical plant in Morgantown, West Virginia — which employed
close to 1,500 people and was the largest remaining generic pharmaceutical
plant in the U.S. — is particularly galling.
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice echoed a sentiment shared across the political spectrum when he said on August 4, “I think it’s pitiful, pitiful, absolutely pitiful that our federal government at this time, with something as critical as pharmaceuticals are to our citizens, is just deciding to sit on the sideline and let this catastrophe happen.”
The closing was uniquely preventable
— if there had been federal or state action premised on prioritizing protecting
public health and economic wellbeing over short-term shareholder returns. We
had the tools. All that was lacking was the boldness and the political will to
use them.
The chain of events started in 2020
when the plant’s then-owner, Mylan (run by Heather Bresch, West Virginia
Senator Joe Manchin’s daughter), merged with Upjohn to form a new company,
Viatris, creating the largest generics company in the world. Not long after,
Viatris announced a “restructuring initiative” that included
shuttering some of its plants, including the Morgantown facility.
The Steelworkers local representing
many of the plant’s workers began petitioning both the incoming Biden
administration and state officials to keep the plant open. Their key argument
was its role in the country’s pharmaceutical supply chain, particularly in the
context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The plant produced 18 billion doses of
low-cost generics a year — including many essential medicines paid for through
various federal programs.
A letter to the Biden administration signed by the
Steelworkers and about 40 other health care and advocacy groups (including The
Democracy Collaborative, where I work) called for using the Defense Production
Act to stop the closure of the plant.
One of President Biden’s first executive orders called
for using the law if necessary for “acquiring additional stockpiles, improving
distribution systems, building market capacity, or expanding the industrial
base.” But the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it,
did none of these things in Morgantown.
Keeping the Morgantown plant open
would have been a clear case of assuring local distribution and manufacturing
capacity for an essential good: medicine. The designation that the plant
already has from the Department of Homeland Security as critical infrastructure underscores that.
Overlooked was the opportunity to
explore a public ownership option in pharmaceuticals. Public
enterprises are free from profit constraints and can instead define their
bottom line based on what they contribute to public health, scientific
advancement, and local economic resiliency.
The gains for our communities would
be massive: reliable access to affordable generics helps keep people out of
hospitals and in jobs, schools, and community service roles. Generics
dramatically reduce our overall health care costs. Plus, the manufacturing
plants are vital economic engines as well as hubs of home-grown
intellectual capital.
It is encouraging that a public
institution, West Virginia University, announced talks with Viatris to acquire the plant,
but that was after hundreds of highly skilled workers were needlessly laid off,
most of whom cannot wait to see if a deal is struck before looking for new
jobs.
What we really need in the face of
continued outsourcing and offshoring is a real industrial strategy that
includes public ownership — and puts community health above the demands of
absentee shareholders.
Dana
Brown is director of The Next System Project at The Democracy
Collaborative, “a research and development lab for the democratic economy.”
This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
