PerkinElmer to Cut 75 Jobs

The odds are that for most of you the words PerkinElmer do not mean much. The company is not a household name, but they are the makers of many products that you see every day. Here is the way that the company describes itself, “At PerkinElmer, we design, manufacture and deliver advanced technology solutions that address the world’s most critical health and safety concerns, including maternal and fetal health, clean water and air, and safe food and toys. Our expertise combines science, innovation and a culture of operational excellence to offer our customers technology services and support that improve the quality of people’s lives worldwide.”

The company has decided to outsource jobs at their Shelton facility, located at 710 Bridgeport Avenue, and move the jobs to a foreign country, where the costs of manufacturing are lower, due to reduced worker wages and fewer regulatory issues. The company is not opening a new facility, but according to reports is simply moving the jobs to their existing facilities in Singapore and Llantrisant, U.K.

The job cut is expected to be about 75 positions, which is not all of the 500 who are currently at the facility in Shelton, but that is still enough to qualify as a mass layoff action by the standards of the Bureau of Labor Statistics guidelines. By their standards any single location job loss of more than 50 individual workers qualifies as a mass layoff action. Mass layoffs require special rules for notification, as they are deemed to have a larger impact on the local community.

Other companies are also outsourcing their jobs to save cash. For those of you who missed our earlier coverage, here is an excerpt from coverage of another company that recently made the decision to outsource its workers:

“When it comes to the outsourcing of jobs there are a lot of different opinions out there. It is true that your thoughts on the matter are likely to be guided by one important factor; how likely you are to actually be out of a job because of the practice. The thing is, it is a thorny issue. Manager claim, rightly, that moving jobs to other nations is cheaper, and that results in a less expensive end product for consumers. Workers claim, also rightly, that the practice takes jobs out of the hands of Americans, making them much less likely to by any product no matter how cheap it may be. Someone with a soft touch might also point out that the new workers are not treated as well as their American counterparts were by their employer.

The bottom line is that, for the time being, the practice is probably not going anywhere.

Take, for example, the case of Sensata Technologies. They are getting ready to give 170 of their workers pink slips as part of a plan to move their jobs over seas and make more of a profit. No doubt that in this economy companies do need to do business smarter in order to stay alive, but one does have to wonder if the costs of closing an existing factory and relocating it to China is not much more expensive in the short term than staying out would have been?”