Working for Abbvie Sligo

J.O. Farmer

I am wondering if anyone knows what it's like to work for Abbvie in Sligo. I know they split from Abbot in January and I would always have had the impression Abbot were not bad to work for. I have been working in labs for another pharma company (not in Sligo) for a few years now and am thinking of moving.
Salary is not my biggest concern more the conditions and career development opportunities.

sligoface

J.O. Farmer wrote: »

I am wondering if anyone knows what it's like to work for Abbvie in Sligo. I know they split from Abbot in January and I would always have had the impression Abbot were not bad to work for. I have been working in labs for another pharma company (not in Sligo) for a few years now and am thinking of moving.
Salary is not my biggest concern more the conditions and career development opportunities.

Well they are mostly only taking on temp contracts, the wages are decent but you have no say in what hours you work and are basically left waiting till the last week of the contract until you find out if it is extended, and then it gets extended for maybe aonther 4-8 weeks and same thing again.

My experience was mixed, i worked there for a year. My contract when i started was 4 eight hour evenings and 7 hrs on friday, this was then changed to 12 hr nights 8pm to 8am, i was made to do 5 in one week every other week including 3 back to back fri, sa,t sun. Then the next week i was meant to do just 2 12s, but was constantly badgered to do a third for OT so I never had a proper break from the place. I was told I'd only be on the 12 hr nights for 8-9 weeks, ended up being on it for 9 months until i couldnt take it anymore, my health and job performance was in the toilet due to lack of rest. I explained this to their hr dept. They didnt care, let me go, forced some woman who has young kids to take the 12 hr nights, threatened her with losing the job if she refused. But the pay was good for me as i dont even have a medical device background, and it was very good experience. Make sure you get on days would be my advice. If you do lab stuff you might not be asked to do nights at all but the day shift, even those on 8 hours, work long too.

Abbvie seems to prefer to run with as little staff as possible, making employees work very long hours and giving a large workload, keeping everyone on their toes (and doing OT) by leaving them on rolling temp contracts that can be terminated at any time, where you have no rights, no sick pay, etc., and using the bad jobs market as leverage. There are guys there a few years still on temp. contracts. But this is not unusual at the present, unfortunately many companies are at it. We all worked right up to noon on christmas eve last year, only to be told in an announcement in a meeting this year that one third of us would be let go by the end of the year, which i dont think actually came about, but many people were shocked by how little the management seemed to care at the time. I thought that at times the communication and organization was very bad in the company, esp. considering it is US based, would have expected better. They often talked about creating good workplace conditions, good workplace culture, but it was just lip service imo. We were all just a number to them. Dont want to sound like i have an axe to grind, just saying if conditions are your priority i would be careful, they don't care about people really. In saying that, you might have a great cv with in demand skills that may put you into a better position and be treated better. The plant is probably going to keep growing so there may be opportunities for advancement, they need to get that ISO 13485 validation and then i would say there will be loads of work. But like i said, if work/life balance is important to you, avoid.

J.O. Farmer

At the moment I am working office hours 9-5.30 in a permanent position. I wouldn't take a position for only a few weeks but I would be open to different working hours.

sligoface

J.O. Farmer wrote: »

At the moment I am working office hours 9-5.30 in a permanent position. I wouldn't take a position for only a few weeks but I would be open to different working hours.

Just edited my other post also, it got cut off first time. Obviously, no way would i leave a permanent job on those hours to go temp at abbvie. If you were on days you would start at 8 probably but getting out on time at 4 would be far from guaranteed. They did announce a few permanent jobs that we could apply for that will be filled in the new year, problem was there was about 70 of us going for about ten jobs, which led to constant rumors, b!tching, etc. Unless its a permanent position you are applying for i wouldnt recommend working there, the temp contracts are completely in the employers favor.

J.O. Farmer

Thanks for the advice. I would have been slow to move for a temporary contract anyway. It's good to get an idea of what it's like from someone who has worked there.

red sean

Just heard Abbvie are letting 25 go next week.

Razleavy

Letting go of 32, possibility of them taking some back when it picks up again in a few months, or so they say.

sligoface

Razleavy wrote: »

Letting go of 32, possibility of them taking some back when it picks up again in a few months, or so they say.

Really? Someone else told me they they were told there would NOT be work for them again in future, but anyway, it's the kind of place that expects huge commitment from people without giving that same loyalty back IMO. If they did have more work you have to apply and interview all over again just to get another three month contract. They'll get away with it though unless the job market improves, seen positions for them on jobs websites and even for really highly qualified roles they are only offering temp contracts.

barrauda17

Thanks for the insight sligoface! I have tried to get into Abbvie through recruitment agenices and their own website cv database but i never get anywhere.I don't feel so bad now if that's what they're at in there.

sligoface

barrauda17 wrote: »

Thanks for the insight sligoface! I have tried to get into Abbvie through recruitment agenices and their own website cv database but i never get anywhere.I don't feel so bad now if that's what they're at in there.

Well it's a big pharma company, so I suppose I shouldn't have expected any different. They're all greedy as sin, making obscene profits worldwide from diseased people, and use the legal system and FDA to suppress any cures that they can't profit from.

To be fair, part of it is just that I found I'm not suited to working in places like that, where you get somewhat institutionalized. Factories are like prisons in a lot of ways, you all wear the same clothes, no windows, cement walls and floor all the same colour, eat slop together in a big canteen. All you hear in the canteen is gossip about things in the factory. It drove me nuts. Being forced to work 12 hr nights plus overtime made it feel even more like jail, you pretty much had to just go to sleep in the morning as soon as you got home, get up in the evening that same day and go right back. Your first day off you couldn't enjoy because you had to sleep through it to recover, so youn really had one proper day off and back again. We actually had the nicest summer since I returned to Ireland 7 years ago, and I had to sleep through most of those sunny days. It sucked!

On the other hand, some people's personalities allow them to work at it for years and won't view it as negative at all. Abbott's had plenty of people there many years, even decades, but I've heard things were considerably better there than at Abbvie, that in Abbott's even low level workers, provided they had good attendance and worked hard, were kept on and they were treated decently enough. They obviously decided that with the recession, they were going to rebrand and do things differently to maximize profits, ie: get temps in and work them round the clock until they fill an order and then let them go. Even though the recruitment agency gets paid in addition to the employee, it still saves them money because they don't have to pay redundancies down the line. And they can strongarm temp workers into accepting conditions that suit the company but are miserable for employees. Temp workers are rarely, if ever, in a union.

Unfortunately though, this is pretty much the norm now in the working world, the days where worker loyalty and length of service were rewarded are long gone. And that is because it's no longer the case where people could just go and work somewhere else at the drop of a hat if they were unhappy. Couple that with the fact that so many workplaces are toxic that changing jobs won't necessarily do you any good, and it really paints the common worker into a dismal corner.

But still, don't let one persons opinion put you off it if you are interested in that field. The pay was decent, and it may be logical for you to get the experience on your CV depending on your desired career path. I didn't study science or engineering in college, this was not an area I ever planned to go into at all, as my strengths lie elewhere. But according to the local papers and other ex-coworkers I meet round the town, they've been laying off recently, especially for the entry level positions like operators and such, anyway. As I said in my earlier post, if you were in a higher up position you probably would have better hours and conditions.