Downtown Kalamazoo by Paladin27

Pfizer Inc. announced Monday afternoon that will close its enormous Ann Arbor research facilities and part of its operations in Kalamazoo, leaving 2,410 of its Michigan employees unemployed. The layoffs will occur between now and the end of 2008 and are part of a larger "streamlining" that will eventually result in 10,000 jobs cut globally.

Governor Jennifer Granholm met with press and city leaders this afternoon following the announcement. “We're going to have a whole ‘Stick Around Ann Arbor' campaign for these employees, because we want them to stay here,” Granholm said. The Governor admits that she was caught off guard as life sciences was one of the areas that Michigan had been heavily recruiting both companies and employees through economic development incentives and groups like Ann Arbor Spark.

Ann Arbor based Edward Vielmetti's Vaccum has an excellent roundup of analysis and local reaction. As proof that pretty much anything can be viewed through blue or red colored glasses, That's Saul, folks and Michigan Liberal offer opposing views and reaction from folks across the state. Also see Bitter Pill in the Detroit News.

UPDATE JAN 24: in No rescue for Pfizer is good thing, Freep columnist Brian Dickerson writes:

We can despair over (Pfizer Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey) Kindler's insistence that there was nothing Granholm could have done to dissuade his company from quitting Ann Arbor.

Or we can be grateful the governor wasn't tempted to squander any more of Michigan's scarce capital in a doomed try to postpone yet another bloated, uncompetitive company's collision with economic reality.

Because really, haven't we done enough to bail out employers who weren't smart enough, nimble enough, or lucky enough to see the future barreling down on them?

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