Covidien eliminating 40 jobs

Covidien, one of the city's largest employers, confirmed Monday it will cut 40 full-time positions from its Watertown plant by January.

The announcement comes as the Massachusetts-based health care company moves four product lines from Faichney Drive to a Covidien manufacturing facility in China.

Products that no longer will be made locally are two feeding pumps, a sequential compression device and circuit boards for blood pressure devices, Richard P. Bevilacqua, Covidien director of communications, said.

The plant now has 275 full-time employees and 320 total positions.

In addition to the full-time cuts, Mr. Bevilacqua said, a number of contracts with temporary workers from Kelly Services Inc. will be terminated, starting next month.

He did not specify the number of temporary workers who would be affected, but said they were all affiliated with the four product lines.

Covidien announced Friday that it would begin producing two enteral feeding pumps, the E-Pump and K-924, at its Shanghai plant.

Last August, Covidien said it would move fabrication of SCDs, or sequential compression devices, to Shanghai. Company officials also said that circuit boards for blood pressure devices, which had been produced in Watertown for the Covidien division Nellcor, would be contracted to a vendor in China.

The earlier announcement affected fewer than 10 full-time workers, Mr. Bevilacqua said.

He said the Watertown plant will continue to produce a "number of other models and products," including thermometers, vascular feeding pumps and chest drainage devices used in open heart surgery.

The Watertown plant also will continue to provide customer service for Covidien, including refurbishing old or broken devices for products no longer manufactured there, Mr. Bevilacqua said.

The manufacturing plant has been a local feature since 1888, when it was known as the Glass Thermometry company. It changed hands several times, becoming Faichney Instrument Co. in 1920 and Chesebrough-Pond's Inc. in 1966. More recently, the plant was owned by Tyco Healthcare/Kendall until the health care company split from its beleaguered parent, Tyco International Ltd., and became Covidien.

Asked whether the recent announcement is an indication that Covidien might leave the area entirely, Mr. Bevilacqua said the company does "not have any plans at this time to close the Watertown facility."

Still, Donald C. Alexander, interim executive director of the Jefferson County Industrial Development Agency, described the job cuts as "terribly disappointing news."

He said he understood the economic pressures that lured manufacturers to China, but lamented that Covidien's decision had been made without the input of local economic development agencies.

"If we can hear about it when these decisions are being discussed, we have a better opportunity to influence them," he said. "Once a decision has been made, there's virtually nothing we can do."

A Covidien employee, who asked not to be named for fear of losing his job, said people at the Watertown plant had been anticipating cuts for some time, but were surprised by changes to the product lines.

"There's not a lot of products made there," the employee said. "Probably 90 percent of the business is in 20 products."

All told, he said, the four lost product lines represented about 60 percent of the plant's current business, with the E-Pump and K-924 alone representing about 40 percent of the business.

Mr. Bevilacqua declined to confirm the numbers. Plant manager Michael F. Brown deferred inquiries to Covidien headquarters in Mansfield, Mass.

The Watertown employee also said 30 people from Kelly Services would be cut as a result of the announcement, a figure Mr. Bevilacqua could not confirm.

"A lot of people in the plant feel that this had been in process already," the employee said. "That we lost two products, that was a surprise."