Confusion follows Eli Lilly ‘plant closing’

It was announced Tuesday that Eli Lilly and Company has now filed a “plant closing” under the Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

Mark Taylor, spokesman for Eli Lilly, said WARN is a required notification that Eli Lilly had to provide when they were going to terminate employee contracts.

Taylor said there is a lot of confusion with the term “plant closing.”

“There is no Eli Lilly plant that will be closing,” he said.

Under WARN, one of two types of notices must be submitted when there is going to be a larger job loss, Taylor said.

Mass layoff and plant closure are the two categories Eli Lilly could have filed.

Since Eli Lilly is expecting to terminate up to 191 employees, Taylor said, it fell under the terminology of a plant closing.

Taylor said it was announced this past December that Eli Lilly was looking to reduce cost and head count of employees. The jobs being terminated are sales representative’s positions, but not all of them are Indiana residents. 

The sales representatives are located all over the country, Taylor said.
The headquarters are in Indianapolis, and that is why the notice had to be filed in Indiana, he said.

“This is all in terms of job reduction,” Taylor said. “There is not going to be any plants closing.”