Sanofi-Aventis Korea said it would reduce its workforce through a voluntary early retirement program (ERP).

"We aim to have an organization that can respond to customer needs more quickly through a more customer-oriented close collaboration system and future core competency development," a Sanofi official  told Korea Biomedical Review. "With this change, we hope to find more innovative ways to deliver medicines and vaccines to Korean patients in a sustainable way."

Such changes have had an impact on the organization of business departments and some support departments, so the company had to implement a voluntary retirement program inevitably, she added.

The Sanofi official stressed that the company is making every effort to communicate transparently and have a constructive and cooperative dialogue with its employees during the transition period.

While the details of the ERP have yet to be disclosed, the labor union of Sanofi said that it is currently negotiating the terms with the company. 

"First of all, Sanofi is a company that does not conduct ERP often," union leader Park Young said. "Except for an ERP program conducted two years ago due to the spin-off of Sanofi Consumer Healthcare, it has been about 10 years since the company last conducted an ERP."

Park said the official announcement is expected to be announced Thursday through the town hall meeting, but the union has been discussing terms of the ERP with management for some time. 

The union has stressed that this has to be the reference point for taking ERP applications, and that the union is absolutely against an ERP that the company unilaterally decides on, Park went on to say.

"Also, while other companies that conduct ERP do so after a one-on-one employee interview, we have made it clear that such interviews are not to be conducted because coercion may be involved," he added.

Park also stressed that the union is discussing the severance payment details of the ERP.

"In the past, the severance payment was set as double the salary plus the average wage of eight months," Park said. "However, as many companies have since increased the severance packages, we also plan to raise it to a certain extent."