The closure of GSK’s factory in Crawley will not be good for the local economy, although there are three years for staff to find something else which will be a help.  If I was in their position I would start looking around now. It would not surprise me if the place runs down before then, with all the best staff getting transfers or moving to other employers and the majority of the survivors being those near retirement age hanging on to get a last year or two of service racked up.
One other reaction to the story is “only 500”?  That site looks huge, a lot bigger than the one I am on that must have about twice as many workers. Must be a lot of automation going on there. If another huge employer can’t be found by 2011 that site could easily support quite a large number of smaller-but-still-significant companies – but please not another upmarket car dealership. Fingers crossed for somewhere that actually makes something.
On the other hand… three years is a long time. Long enough for GSK to change their strategy?
I worked on that site in the 1990s, 500 people is about right. The facility is large, but most of it is taken up by storage and heavily automated manufacturing lines, and there was even a football pitch on it when I was there ! Sorry to see it go and to see those people lose their jobs, but GSK, like many pharmacos, is going through some hard times and needs to do this. To be honest, I am surprised the Crawley facility lasted as long as it did.