Fed up with paying the price for Teva's woes, workers dig in

WHITE banners with red-and-black Hebrew letters saying "We won't be the victims" hang in the parking lot, lobby and hallways of the Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd factory at Kfar Saba, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

Workers at the site are pushing back against proposed job cuts and demanding managers share the pain as the world's biggest maker of copycat medicines tries to recover from US$43 billion in botched acquisitions that left it mired in debt. Labourers earning an average 8,000 shekels (S$3,033) a month shouldn't have to bear the brunt when interim chief executive Yitzhak Peterburg gets paid almost 100,000 shekels a day, they say.

The demands present yet another front for a company under siege from investors, creditors, and its own government. The drugmaker has failed to identify a new CEO since Erez Vigodman's ouster six months ago, while scrambling to fill other key positions. Its temporary overseers, forced to take increasingly aggressive steps to stem a 53 per cent rout in market value, have slashed dividend payments, exited markets, stepped up asset sales and deepened job cuts.