Sanofi’s planned exit from Bangladesh might not be a seamless one, as employees angry about the lack of compensation packages have threatened to go on a hunger strike.
Sunday, workers of Sanofi Bangladesh formed a human chain in front of the National Press Club in Dhaka and sent the company a 72-hour ultimatum, demanding a severance plan, The Independent reported.
“If our demands are not met by Thursday, we would have to opt for tougher measures,” said Anower Hossen, leader of the Sanofi Bangladesh Officers Development Council (SBODC), a newly formed union of local Sanofi officials. By that, he meant a hunger strike at the company’s headquarters Thursday, according to the local newspaper.
The French pharma previously told FiercePharma that “as a responsible company, our employees’ interests will always remain our priority.” The company didn’t immediately respond to a new request for comment on the employees’ demand.
Sanofi has decided to leave the country by selling its 54.64% stake in the local outfit within the next year or so, local managing director Muin Uddin Mazumder was cited as saying earlier this month. It follows GlaxoSmithKline’s similar move in late 2018 to shut its drug manufacturing operations in the country and bundle the remaining consumer health business with its India nutrition products in a £3.1 billion ($4 billion) sale to Unilever.
Pointing to that GSK deal, Hossen said it’s common for multinational companies to offer compensation packages when they close their businesses.
“From (the) workers’ side, we have prepared a proposal for that compensation package and submitted that to the officials concerned, but we haven’t got any assurance on our proposal,” he said, as quoted by The Independent.
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In an interview with the Daily Star, Mazumder earlier said Sanofi will only transfer its share to a buyer that pledges to keep its current 1,000 employees. But employees said they are not convinced.
“Sanofi said it would hand over its share to third party and the third party would ensure at least one-year contract with all of Sanofi’s employees. But we are not sure about it because the new owners might not employ us at all. So we want a reasonable compensation package,” Majharul Islam, publicity secretary of the SBODC, told the newspaper.
Sanofi sells some popular drugs in Bangladesh, including antibiotic Sefrad (cephradine), cancer therapies Taxotere (docetaxel) and Eloxatin (oxaliplatin), and diabetes blockbuster Lantus.
