Teva employees barricade themselves inside factory to protest layoffs

Teva employees in Jerusalem are barricading themselves inside the Har Hotzvim factory to protest the pharmaceutical giant’s planned layoffs.

“We are staring to barricade ourselves and we will be setting up a protest tent outside the factory,” the factory union says. “We will not give up our factory. We’ll go to sleep with our children in the factory.”

Teva will make 1,750 employees redundant in Israel as part of plans to slash 14,000 jobs globally over two years, according to Histadrut head Avi Nissenkorn.

The cuts would amount to more than a quarter of the Israeli drugmaker’s global workforce of over 55,000, of which fewer than 7,000 work in Israel.