MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Monongalia County officials are working to try and soften the impact of the recently announced July 2021 closing of the Mylan manufacturing plant in Morgantown.
Since the Dec. 11 announcement by plant owner Viatris, several local representatives have started preliminary discussions on how to help 1,500 employees who will be impacted by the plant’s closure.
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin met with local officials Friday and called it a good first step to finding a solution.
“I’ll continue to work with local, state and federal leaders, Viatris, and other parties to help the workers find employment or training for new skills, and hopefully find a buyer to continue utilizing the plant. I am committed to doing everything possible to help our fellow West Virginians affected by this decision,” Manchin said.
Viatris previously announced it would work with local officials as well as union representatives to help ease the local affects.
Monongalia County Commissioner Tom Bloom said a proper response has to be built on the correct information about those who are impacted.
“We need to collected the correct data,” Bloom said. “Know exactly what we are talking about, who the 15-hundred people are, what are their jobs skills and what they would be losing and then we can come up with an approach for them.”
WVU Bureau of Business and Economics Research Director John Deskins said the response has been a proper one.
“It’s encouraging that our local leaders and our statewide leaders have come together, I think aggressively, to try to start to develop plans to help out these laid off men and women who lost their jobs and to also to start marketing that area,” he said.
The announced closing of the plant, although devastating, wasn’t completely unexpected. Deskins said they’ve included that possibility in the bureau’s data in recent years.
“In our West Virginia Economic Outlook Report, we actually have listed that as a potential downside risk for the economic forecast for two or three years now, so it wasn’t completely a surprise at the same time,” Deskins said.
The Chestnut Ridge plant has been a part of the Morgantown community since it’s opening in 1965 as part of Mylan Pharmaceuticals. Since then, Mylan has seen many changes to it’s corporate structure, including a merger with Pfizer Inc.’s Upjohn unit agreed upon in 2019 and officially approved in November. Now, as part of a restructuring plan, the Morgantown plant will see operations close sometime in mid-2021 and as a result, Deskins said the economic affects for the Morgantown area could be far reaching.
“They’re going to cut spending at restaurants, movie theaters, whatever, wherever you spend money locally, that’s going to have a broader spillover affect on other local businesses,” explained Deskins. “So the overall impact will be definitely worse than the 1,500 direct jobs lost,” he said.
Not only is local consumer spending at-risk of being greatly affected, housing markets could also be vulnerable, according to Deskins.
“If they have to leave the area to find jobs elsewhere, they put their houses on the market, it could even depress housing prices in Morgantown for awhile. So it’s got a lot of implications really,” he said.