FAIRFIELD, N.J. – Trenton loves a corporate ribbon-cutting, Save Jerseyans.
Someone ought to make our politicians attend the going-away parties.
Teva Pharmaceuticals plans to close its Fairfield manufacturing plant at the end of January, with 61 employees losing their jobs by February 1, 2027. The company cites underutilization, operating costs, declining demand and price pressure.
This is the same company for which New Jersey approved nearly $40 million in performance-based tax credits in 2018 to attract its U.S. headquarters to Parsippany. Phil Murphy celebrated New Jersey as “the place to be for the world’s most competitive life sciences companies.”
Eight years later, 61 Fairfield workers are preparing for a very different milestone.
The headquarters incentive and the Fairfield plant are separate matters. An approved credit isn’t necessarily money paid out, and Teva is maintaining other New Jersey operations. But the announcement belongs in a much larger conversation that Trenton should be having with considerably more urgency.
Because Teva has plenty of company.
Samsung Electronics America announced a headquarters move from New Jersey to Texas affecting 739 Englewood Cliffs positions. Most employees were offered relocation; others were dismissed. Separately, Samsung SDS America identified 179 New Jersey roles affected by its own headquarters relocation.
Mars Snacking is closing its Newark hub and shifting functions to Chicago, affecting approximately 307 employees. Mars is retaining manufacturing and innovation operations in Hackettstown, but Newark is losing the corporate operation it welcomed just a few years ago.
And the downsizing announcements keep coming:
- Bristol Myers Squibb: Another 265 positions tied to its Princeton headquarters, following rounds of 247 and 206 announced earlier this year.
- Novartis: 322 additional positions tied to East Hanover, bringing its four announced rounds this year to 572.
- Wonder: 533 workers affected as it closes production facilities in Cranford and Fairfield and consolidates at a larger facility in Swedesboro. That’s an in-state consolidation, but a painful disruption for the affected workers.
- HelloFresh: 374 workers listed in a Swedesboro notice.
- Verizon: 282 workers in a July Basking Ridge notice.
- Prudential: 125 workers in its September Newark notice.
- Dr. Praeger’s: 168 workers in Elmwood Park.
- Gerresheimer: 139 workers in Vineland.
- Banker Steel: 115 workers in South Plainfield.
- Novo Nordisk: 108 workers in Plainsboro.
- Fiserv: 98 workers in Berkeley Heights.
- Johnson & Johnson Services: 88 workers in New Brunswick.
- Merck: 54 workers in its September Rahway notice.
Recent state notices also name BASF, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, UBS, Optum, Cenlar, Cellares, Enablx, Educational Testing Service, Barrette Outdoor Living, EWC Controls, Culinaire, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Acme Markets, Atlantic City Linen Supply, Mars Information Services and Conduent. Those filings identify affected workers; they do not mean each company is leaving New Jersey altogether.
Then there’s The Cannabist Company, which announced the closure of two Vineland cultivation and manufacturing facilities affecting 86 workers, alongside plans to sell its New Jersey dispensaries as part of a broader bankruptcy restructuring.
Meanwhile, major pharmaceutical investments are landing elsewhere: Bristol Myers Squibb’s $2.3 billion Texas campus. Bayer’s $2.2 billion Ohio site. Novartis’s $771 million North Carolina expansion.
Johnson & Johnson is investing more than $1 billion in Florida vision operations and more than $2 billion in a North Carolina biologics facility.
What’s Trenton’s contribution to the competitive landscape?
Business tax and fee changes expected to extract another $750 million in fiscal 2027. Governor Mikie Sherrill called the resulting budget “the most fiscally responsible budget passed in decades.”
You almost have to admire the gall.
Trenton keeps treating the private sector like an ATM with a personnel department. Then politicians act surprised when the personnel department starts issuing relocation offers and severance paperwork.
Here’s a radical idea: give employers a reason to build, hire and expand here without first negotiating a special deal with the government.
Competitive taxes. Predictable rules. A state budget that recognizes there are limits to what businesses and their employees can carry.
The workers facing layoffs don’t need another speech about our “innovation economy.”
They need a paycheck.
And they can’t pay the mortgage with a governor’s press release.
