New Report Shows Pharmaceutical Corporations in Puerto Rico Exploit Workers While Making Billions in Profits

Today, the Center for Popular Democracy and The Hedge Clippers released the report "Pharma's Failed Promise: How Big Pharma Hurts Workers, Dodges Taxes, and Extracts Billions in Puerto Rico." It is the first of three reports set to come out this year that highlight the exploitative business practices of pharmaceutical corporations operating in Puerto Rico.

The report focuses on how pharmaceutical companies underpay their workers, many of whom have worked for years at the same company but continue to make minimum wage, while Pharmaceutical CEOs make $20 million a year on average. A series of interviews with cleaning and security staff at pharmaceutical plants showed how pharmaceutical companies abuse their employees through unethical employment practices such as minimum wages, paltry benefits and poor workplace safety conditions. None of the workers interviewed had union protection despite many pharmaceutical companies being unionized employers in other geographies.

"For decades the people of Puerto Rico have heard about the good paying jobs that are brought by pharmaceutical companies as the reason to provide incredibly large tax breaks," said Julio Lopez Varona, Co-Chief of Campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy and an editor of this report. "This report shows that these claims are lies and that hundreds if not thousands of workers in Puerto Rico have suffered from low wages and poor working conditions while pharma makes billions. The people of Puerto Rico deserve to live and work with dignity -- they need good paying, stable and safe jobs that value the labor of those who make the lifesaving medical products we all rely on."

The Puerto Rican manufacturing sector, of which pharma is a large part, is projected to receive $14.568 billion in corporate tax breaks in 2022, the report highlights. That is larger than the operating budget of the Puerto Rican government. And yet, the report finds that despite over a projected $100 billion in tax breaks from 2017 to 2023, these tax breaks only created 7,000 direct and indirect jobs in an archipelago of 3.3 million people.

"This report shows how exploitative US pharmaceutical companies in Puerto Rico are towards their workers in the archipelago," said Maggie Corser, Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Popular Democracy and the author of this report. "When a CEO of a pharmaceutical company makes 1,131 times what their lowest earning workers in Puerto Rico make, it can't be described as anything but unethical and abusive."

"We hope this report brings attention to the plight these workers endure and that to ensure that we hold accountable pharmaceutical companies for their abuses," Lopez Varona said. "Now is the time to rethink what these pharmaceutical companies actually provide to our people and consider ways to ensure workers' livelihoods are prioritized over exuberant profits."