Higher!

http://news.yahoo.com/sanofis-900-planned-layoffs-could-run-higher-unions-173508627--finance.html?

Sanofi's 900 planned layoffs could run higher: unions

PARIS (Reuters) - Sanofi's plan to restructure its research operations in France could lead to more job losses than the 900 layoffs mooted by the drugmaker, union representatives said.

Unions said the company's figure underestimated the number of job cuts as Sanofi reshuffles its laboratories into regional research hubs at the expense of smaller centers.

"There are thousands of employees that will be hit by layoffs and a high number of internal transfers," Pascal Vially, a representative for the CFDT trade union, told Reuters.

Sanofi has scaled back planned layoffs under pressure from the French government, which has been struggling to contain a rising unemployment rate, and said it could shed around 900 jobs in France in the next three years - fewer than the 2,500 predicted by trade unions.

But the 900 cuts - to be achieved through voluntary redundancies, internal transfers and early retirements - do not include the 640 jobs at a cancer research centre in Toulouse, which Sanofi wants to exit.