[richlevy]

At the risk of setting off a long long post by TW, I had to post this.

Millions of dollars in recall costs and fines. Millions of dollars of damage to brand name. The fact that it was mostly children's medicine makes the damage even worse.

But they probably saved a few hundred grand right up until the shit hit the fan.

Why do corporations, the most strident defenders of capitalism, fail to grasp the concept of 'you get what you pay for?' This was a pharmaceutical factory, not a hot dog stand or a gift shop. You don't staff it with temps the way you would a shop on the beach.

I worked with someone years ago who worked for a PA pharma company that relocated jobs to Puerto Rico thanks to the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which in theory was not supposed to allowed that. A few years later there was a massive recall of some product from the Puerto Rico plant that led to shortages. But they saved some money.


Drug plant that recalled children's Tylenol had cut staff

A Pennsylvania drug plant plagued by quality-control problems that prompted a nationwide recall of children's Tylenol and dozens of other pediatric medicines drastically reduced its workforce in recent years, according to local government tax records.

And a Food and Drug Administration inspection report earlier this year cited failure to properly train contract and temporary employees as part of a catalogue of problems at the plant run by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a subsidiary of pharmaceuticals giant Johnson & Johnson.
Other deficiencies included bacterial contamination of raw materials, shoddy equipment maintenance and failure to investigate 46 consumer complaints "regarding foreign materials, black or dark specks" stretching back almost a year before the recall, the FDA reported.
In addition to children's Tylenol, more than 40 pediatric products were recalled, including Motrin, Zyrtec and Benadryl.