Workers of the Teva pharmaceuticals company threatened Tuesday to stop distributing medication against cancer, AIDS, jaundice and other serious diseases, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inability to convince the firm’s CEO Kåre Schultz to reduce the number of Israeli layoffs he intends to execute over the course of the next three years.
Protesters took to the streets outside the Teva tablet factory in a rage, burning tires in yet another demonstration against the mass layoffs while another Teva inhaler factory saw workers handcuff themselves to the premise gate.
The protesters said they intended to sleep inside the warehouses to prevent the vital drugs from being taken.
Itzik Ben Simon, chairman of the Teva tablet factory's workers' union, described the layoffs as akin to “a terror attack in Jerusalem. We will continue to assemble at the factory entrance and we will expand to other intersections around the country. There will be no production.”
Ben Simon went on to say that Schultz’s decision to fire thousands of workers and to close down the factory by 2019 would not be accepted.
“We are one. We request forgiveness from the sick that the pills sit here and cannot leave, but the responsibility falls on the management of Teva.”
Schultz informed the prime minister that he did not intend to revise the planned number of redundancies that is expected to reach 1,700 workers from the financially straitened company, and that the plan to shut down its factories would proceed.
“This is our plan to cope with the situation which we are in. Any attempt by you to change the plan could cause the company serious damage and cause more layoffs and the closure of more factories,” Schultz warned as he doubled down on his proposal.