Spine

Medtronic spokesman: State report in error, company has already completed local layoffs

Medtronic Inc. has already completed its reduction in force, according to a company spokesman, and will not lay off any additional employees.

A state notice published this morning said the medical device maker will lay off 82 employees beginning Tuesday and finish the reduction in a month.

However, Medtronic spokesman Steve Cragle said the reduction of 82 employees was completed in late April or early May.

Also, Cragle could not provide details about what positions were eliminated here. The company’s spinal and biologics unit is based here and it employs about 1,500.

The layoffs here are a part of a company-wide restructuring that will pare away about 1,500-2,000 workers amid sluggish sales of Medtronic’s implants. The layoffs were announced in February and will reduce Medtronic’s total work force by 4 to 5 percent.

Cragle said the reduction was not completely done through layoffs. Some were through a “combination of cost-saving measures, expense controls and voluntary programs,” like an early retirement program and voluntary severance program.

“We’re doing this because we continue to experience softening in some of our core markets, including the spine market,” Cragle said. “So, while we believe those markets are growing at 3 percent-4 percent, that’s down significantly from the single, high-digit growth we saw a few years ago so we had to adjust our infrastructure to meet current growth expectations.”

The Minneapolis-based device maker has scaled back its earnings estimates twice in the past year and forecast an anemic 2 to 3 percent growth in the global market for devices.

 

Josh Sandberg

Josh Sandberg is the President and CEO of Ortho Spine Partners and sits on several company and industry related Boards. He also is the Creator and Editor of OrthoSpineNews.

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