Recently, Procter & Gamble Co. announced that it will be doing away with approximately 215 Boston jobs at its manufacturing plant located in the southern area of the city. A company spokesperson also said that Procter & Gamble plans to close the second of its two plants in Devens that handles packaging of Gillette products by the end of 2010.

The South Boston jobs cuts represent around 9 percent of the company’s 2,400 employees in Massachusetts. Anywhere from 50 to 60 workers are expected to be relocated to the plant located in Andover, but most of the operations are being moved either to Mexico or Poland.

At this time, company’s facilities in Andover handle the manufacturing of aerosols and a variety of shaving related products. After the closure of the Devens plant, Procter & Gamble plan to start packing and warehousing operations at Andover.

Altogether the company’s Devens operations has somewhere around 400 in depended contractors working their daily. From time to time, temporary workers are brought in, which can boost the number of individuals to 800. Proctor & Gamble contracts out all of this work through third party employer, SONOCO.

The first Devens plant was closed in 2006, which was only a year after the company purchases Gillette for $53 billion. Before being used by Proctor & Gamble, both of these plants were military bases. The company has received some criticism for using an outside company to hire only temporary workers instead of offering full time, permanent positions.

“All of these moves are critical to the future success of the blades and razor business,” said Proctor & Gamble spokesperson Kelly Vanasse. “These changes make us able to better serve the needs of the regions where these products are going to be sold and also bring some cost efficiencies.”

According to Vanasse, the South Boston job cuts are the result of the company moving the manufacturing of products like Mach3 and Venus to Poland and a recently built Mexican plant. The South Boston facility will remain open.

Labels: Boston Jobs