Union blockades at GSK’s pharmaceutical sites in Rixensart and Wavre continued on Thursday morning and are expected to last until the evening, after the company announced plans to cut 1,217 jobs in Belgium.
The strike action began overnight from Wednesday to Thursday at the two Walloon Brabant sites. Unions had said the blockade would last for at least 24 hours.
The action was launched in response to a restructuring plan unveiled on Wednesday by the Belgian subsidiary of the British group. The proposal includes 482 job losses among employees and 735 among managers.
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Shortly before 09:00, FGTB managers’ delegate Karim Aifa told Belga News Agency that the main entrances to both sites remained blocked, along with all secondary access points.
He said only staff needed to care for animals or enter for safety reasons were being allowed through.
“In more than 30 years, I have never seen so many people at the entrances,” Aifa said. “I think workers are beginning to grasp the scale of the announcement.”
Union representatives are due to meet during the day to decide how to respond to the restructuring plan.
Aifa said there was little hope of drastically reducing the number of job cuts, but added that unions still intended to look for creative ways to limit the impact as much as possible.
He also warned that opportunities for redeployment within the company may be more limited than in 2020, when solutions had been found for some workers.
The unions have also filed an open-ended strike notice as part of a joint union front.
