Employees at the troubled Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) subsidiary, Teva Tech, staged a three-hour walkout at the company's plant at Ramat Hovav today, with the support of the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel).
The employees shut down production at all the plant's production facilities, including the one that produces the company's flagship MS drug, Copaxone. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) did not report the stoppage to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), although it did report yesterday that it had obtained US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to begin marketing one its generic drugs.
Teva Tech's employees are protesting over the deadlock in negotiations with management on a new labor agreement at the plant. The industrial action first began 10 days ago, when staff locked the plant's front gate, preventing the delivery of raw materials.
The Teva Tech staff are seeking to create a precedent as far as labor relations within the Teva group are concerned, by instituting a table of fixed salary bands, which will allow staff to be promoted automatically according to their job and tenure. This is currently the accepted system in the public sector, but the Teva management is strongly opposed to it.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 1, 2008
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