An in-depth look uncovers astonishing evidence that all is not well at a long-revered icon. How bad is the diagnosis- and could some tough medicine help?
IMAGINE:
- ADMITTING PUBLICLY you have made “improper payments” in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
- BEING SUED by the former head of your clinical trials in a whistleblowing lawsuit that alleges he was terminated because he raised safety concerns overdeaths and injuries caused by your products.
- BEING FORCED to divulge internal emails over a less-than-forthright Internet-based marketing campaign undertaken to try to blunt negative talk about your products.
- BEING ORDERED by a jury to pay $5 million in damages for the death of a one-year-old due to inadequate safety labeling on one of your most popular products.
- FACING A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT in Canada for negligent testing and marketing of your heartburn product which resulted in the death of a 15-year-old girl, among others.
- BEING SUED by the Attorney General of Texas for fraudulent dealing and improperly influencing a state employee to purchase more than $100 million of your product.
- HAVING A LABORATORY REPORT COME OUT that reportedly uncovers a relatively high amount of undisclosed carcinogenic chemicals in your company’s flagship products: baby and kids’ body washes and shampoo.
Imagine all of these events happening in the past year.Now stop imagining. For Johnson & Johnson, this is reality.
Talk about a stunning surprise. For many years, the New Brunswick, NJ-headquartered Johnson & Johnson, or J & J (NYSE: JNJ) has been a poster child for an ethically-managed company- “Exhibit A” in the argument that businesses can do well by doing good.
However, a pattern of developments seem to suggest that halo is no longer deserved.
Granted, the pharmaceutical and drug industry is an area where litigation is rampant. People get sick. Treatments emerge and are effective for many, but some people will die or become further injured. And some of those people will think that it is your product’s fault. They may sue. They may win. But is that an indictment of a business’s ethics?
In most instances, no.
But J & J is emerging as a for-instance where the range and diversity of cases is so severe that perhaps it is not a series of isolated incidents, but rather more a pattern that strongly suggests the business is in the throes of a compliance and ethics crisis.
Each case has been reported in the press as it happened. What no one has done, until now, is assemble all the many pieces into one package- and that is where the story about today’s J & J becomes quite disturbing.
Flashback a quarter-century to the event that sealed J & J’s reputation as one of the good guys. A deranged individual in the Chicago area had tampered with Extra Strength Tylenol capsules by filling them with cyanide and replacing them on store shelves. Seven people died.
Without knowing the scope or source of the problem, the company immediately launched a nationwide recall. Ultimately the company’s manufacturing quality control was exonerated and- because it stuck to a policy of full and honest disclosure throughout the Tylenol scare and it took quick actions to safeguard the public’s health, no matter the cost- J & J emerged from this crisis with a strong reputation and with the Tylenol brand intact.
Much can happen in 25 years.
More recently, has J & J been putting short-term profits ahead of patient safety? Ironically, that is the exact reverse of the famous Johnson & Johnson credo, which starts out, “We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services.” Shareholders are last in line, assuming that if you take care of everything else the profits will follow (http://www.jnj.com/our_company/our_credo/index.htm).
TEXAS-SIZED LAWSUIT
J & J is not accused of more peccadilloes. One of the hardest slaps came in December 2006, when the State of Texas decided to join a whistleblowing lawsuit filed against the company in 2004. The case revolves around Risperdal, an antipsychotic sold at very high prices (up to $190.49 for a 30-day supply, according to Drugstore.com). Bloomberg News reports that drugs like Risperdal account for more than 90 percent of a $10.5 billion a year market for anti-psychotics, with most of the tab picked up by taxpayers.
A high price alone is not a problem. The sticking point is that according to the Texas suit, J & J improperly influenced the adoption of Risperdal by paying off state officials. Case in point: Dr. Stephen Shon, the former medical director of behavioral health at the Texas Department of State Health Services and original architect of the TMAP initiative prescribing guidelines that encouraged sales of Risperdal. Shon was forced out of his job amidst allegations that he had served as what amounts to a paid mouthpiece for J & J, making nearly 100 paid trips around the country to jawbone officials in other states on behalf of Rispersal.
And then there is TMAP itself. Short for the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, TMAP was a 1995-1997 project offering a series of flowcharts to help doctors determine which psychotropic medication to prescribe for individual patients. The TMAP flowcharts often result in a recommendation to specifically prescribe Risperdal.
Developing TMAP cost the State of Texas $5.6 million. However, a third of the cost ($1.8 million) was offset by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest health-oriented foundation whose assets are mainly invested in J & J stock. Coincidence?
In 2004, Allen Jones, a former investigator for the state of Pennsylvania filed the original whistleblowing suit, alleging that the company improperly influenced the development of TMAP to promote sales of Risperdal by manipulating data during the algorithm design stage so that Risperdal would appear more effective and safer than it really was.
“We believe Texas has been defrauded, and we’re going to be looking to get our money back” says the state’s Attorney General, Greg Abbott. Over the past three years, Texas alone has purchased nearly $200 million of Risperdal. Analysts estimate that penalties, fines or settlements over this case across a series of states could potentially run into the billions of dollars.
PUBLIC ADMISSION OF BRIBERY
On February 12, 2007, Johnson & Johnson admitted that improper bribery payments had been made in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
In its statement, J & J admitted that certain subsidiaries “are believed to have made improper payments in connection with the sale of medical devices in two small-market countries.”
This may be a bigger problem for J & J than it initially appears. As Morgan Stanley analyst Glenn Reicin pointed out in a research note for clients, this public disclosure may well have been a preemptive attempt to avoid federal prosecution. That is particularly important to J & J because “a company that is found guilty of a felony can be barred from Medicare programs,” Reicin wrote.
This is just the latest in a series of overseas missteps for J & J in recent years.
In early 2006, the company received a subpoena from the SEC requesting documents relating to the participation by several subsidiaries in the United Nations Iraq Oil-For-Food Program. In 2005, Portugal’s regulators fined J & J for participating in an illegal cartel in supply bids to 22 different hospitals on 36 occasions. In 2004 J & J Poland was fined over distribution agreements which illegally restricted market competition and prices under Polish law.
CLASS ACTION IN CANADA OVER KIDS AND HEARTBURN
In January of this year, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Canada certified a class action lawsuit against J & J over its Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) drug, Propulsid. Many people commonly call GERD symptoms “heartburn.”
This was welcome news to Terence Young, whose 15-year-old daughter Vanessa died of a heart arrhythmia after taking the drug in 2000.”Vanessa would be pleased because the work that I’ve done is to try and save other families from going through what we went through,” Young, a politician based in Ontario, said to the Canadian Press news agency upon hearing that the suit had been certified.
Propulsid was originally introduced in 1993. While initially only approved for treatment of adult nighttime heartburn, Johnson & Johnson decided that there was a large market for the drug in the pediatric market, despite a lack of studies showing effectiveness- or safety- in children.
Yet J & J marketed aggressively to this demographic, as doctors are generally free to prescribe medicines beyond the specific, FDA-approved uses.
In 1998, Propulsid sales topped $1 billion, according to the New York Times, which noted that perhaps 20 percent of babies in neo-natal intensive care were on the drug. The questionable side, as reported by the New York Times, was that “dozens had died and more than 100 patients had suffered serious heart problems by March 1998 after taking Propulsid.”
More questionable still were the aggressive marketing efforts- masquerading as “educational efforts” and thus permissible under FDA guidelines, such as footing the bill for a press run of 10,000 textbooks about childhood digestive problems (the book recommended Propulsid) and sponsoring groups that made presentations about treating reflux with Propulsid to nearly 8,000 pediatric doctors and nurses.
J & J even developed a cherry-flavored liquid version of Propulsid, saying it was designed for geriatric patients. Yet documents show that as much as 90 percent of it actually went to children.
Along the way, doubts and worries began to swirl around Propulsid. In 1998, the FDA even made a presentation to the company expressing its growing concerns over reports of death and injuries resulting from the drug. According to the New York Times, that presentation included a slide that read, “Is it acceptable for your nighttime heartburn medicine to have the potential to kill you?”
By this time the FDA scheduled a meeting to discuss its concerns with a panel of outside experts to be held in a public forum. The New York Times also reported that in preparing for the hearing, a senior J & J executive wrote a note, “Do we want to stand in front of the world and admit that we were never able to prove efficacy!” The words “never able” were underlined for emphasis.
Apparently not. Three weeks before the scheduled hearing, Johnson & Johnson pulled the drug off the market in the United States. The hearing was canceled.
In 2004, Johnson & Johnson reached a $90 million agreement in the U.S. to settle federal class action suits that alleged more than 300 people had died and 16,000 were injured due to the use of Propulsid. The Canadian class action is ongoing.
FABLES AND LABELS
Central to J & J has always been its over-the-counter (OTC) health and beauty product lines- but trouble lurks there too. For example, in February of this year the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (a coalition of U.S.-based health and environmental NGOs) announced that its lab tests found significant amounts of carcinogenic chemicals in a variety of children’s bath products, including Johnson’s Head-to-Toe Baby Wash and Johnson’s Kid’s Shampoo Watermelon Explosion.
Perhaps more worrisome, however, was last September’s $5 million punitive judgment against J & J’s Ortho-McNeil division for the March 2002 death of a one-year-old infant from Tylenol. J & J initially offered the parents $10,000 to settle the case.
The baby’s parents had sued Johnson & Johnson, claiming that the labeling on Infant’s Tylenol did not adequately disclose that the product is three times stronger than Children’s Tylenol. They argued that it is counterintuitive to think that an infant’s formulation would be that much more potent. The child died from acetaminophen toxicity three days after receiving the medicine for cold symptoms.
This case mirrored a lawsuit from over a decade earlier, where a14-month old girl underwent a liver transplant due to being overdosed with grape-flavored Infants’ Tylenol. At that time, J & J had vowed changing the labels to prevent recurrence.
A search of the Internet uncovers many other desperate and similar parents’ stories with Tylenol.
STUDENT DIES IN MIDTOWN MANHATTAN
Perhaps no problem faced by J & J was potentially more damaging than a death on April 2, 2004.
On that day, Zakiya Kennedy, an 18-year-old who dreamed of being a model, was waiting for a subway on the 42nd Street platform in midtown Manhattan when she fell down. After getting up, she approached a policeman complaining of a headache and leg pains. Within seconds the Berkeley College freshman collapsed and died. The tabloids of the nation’s largest city were ready to pounce on the story.
At first the story was that she died due to being pushed by her boyfriend- who was quickly vilified. However, the story took a less interesting turn when an autopsy revealed the cause of death was a blood clot, a pulmonary embolism, which is extremely rare in healthy 18 year-olds.
Later it was learned that the teenager had recently started using the Ortho Evra birth control patch manufactured by Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical division of J & J. The teenager’s family began to speak out against the company, and soon a confidentially agreement and financial settlement was reached with them. At that point the story largely disappeared from public view.
Yet this death was important as a tip of the proverbial iceberg- with persistent questions beginning to arise about potential misconduct by Johnson & Johnson around the design, launch and marketing of Ortho Evra patches.
As of December 31, 2006 more than 1,500 claimants were pursuing J & J over Ortho Evra. Claimants include a Texas woman paralyzed by a stroke just 12 days after initial use and the families of a 25-year-old mother of two who died of a heart attack after six weeks on the patch; a 14-year-old girl who died from a blood clot in her lower pelvis after just eight weeks; and a 25-year-old mother of three who died from a brain blood clot after two weeks on the patch.
Grave concerns had in fact taken root still earlier. By late November 2005, the FDA had required J & J to change the product labeling to include bold-face language that stated “You will be exposed to about 60% more estrogen if you use Ortho Evra than if you use a typical birth control pill.”
Ortho Evra remains on the market but sales have dipped due to “labeling changes and negative media coverage concerning product safety” according to J & J.
Bolstering the ever-growing series of legal claims against the company is an increasing amount of evidence that the company knew that its product caused problems.
For example, in the 17 months between April 2002 and September 2003, the FDA logged 9,116 adverse reaction reports, according to Online Legal Marketing Ltd. In contrast, the Ortho birth control pill garnered only 1,237 adverse event reports to the FDA even though six times as many women were using the pill. CBS calculated that the risks of a clot are 14 times higher with the patch versus the pill.
Some think that worse is yet to come for the company.
For example, recent studies have conclusively linked estrogen supplements with increased incidence of breast cancer, due to estrogen providing stimuli to cause the cancer to grow more rapidly. In January 2007, researchers at the University of Illinois extended the link further with studies that found that estrogen also shielded cancerous cells in the breast from the body’s immune system.
If future researchers establish a link between Ortho Evra’s high doses of estrogen and increased rates of breast cancer, J & J would be headed into a financial and PR storm. But that’s the future. J & J is dealing with the here and now.
In the Internet age, news travels fast. Recognizing that, J & J designed a comprehensive online marketing campaign allegedly intended to make negative information on Ortho Evra harder to find.
According to internal documents unsealed by a New Jersey Superior Court this spring (over J & J protestations), the company was in the process of buying (or planning to buy) all the top keyword positions for related searches online, as well as intending to create an “unbranded website” seemingly unaffiliated with J & J. With “search engine optimization” strategies, J & J hoped to have this unbranded website show up as second most popular behind the official Ortho Evra site, thereby covertly getting its message out.
J & J also bought approximately 100 dubious URL names such as: deathpatch.com, badevra.com, the Patchkills.com, ThePatchTruth.org; and patchsucks.com.
CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER BLOWS THE WHISTLE
On other fronts, things are already getting worse for the New Brunswick company. In November 2006, Dr. Joel S. Lippman, a former VP, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, claiming that he was dismissed for raising safety concerns about various products, including Ortho Evra as well as at least two products that he had urged not to be released, and which were later recalled after causing injuries or deaths.
J & J denied Lippman’s charges, stating that Lippman was fired “as a result of inappropriate conduct and mismanagement of responsibilities unrelated to the allegations he raises in the lawsuit.”
It’s hard to imagine Dr. Lippman, with a Masters Degree in Public Health from Harvard, as a bad apple. During his 15-year career with Johnson & Johnson, he rose to be head of Clinical Trials at the Ethicon division.
In 2005, his role was Vice President of Worldwide Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer at Johnson & Johnson. And in the fall of that year, he was also feted as “supporter of the year” by the New Jersey-based company at its annual ball.At this writing, Lippman’s case remains active.
DELIVERING TO THE BOTTOM LINE
Whatever problems there may be, shareholders are also bearing the pain.
Over the past five years, J & J aggregate stock performance has been anemic- flat over the five years ended this March.
J & J stock woes, however, are not transposable to the market at large, or even its industry segment. During the period, the S&P is up over 30%. Meanwhile direct competitors such as Sanofi- Aventis, Novartis and Procter & Gamble rang up 49%, 30% and 40% gains respectively over the same period.
BAND-AID OR A TRANSFUSION?
Back to the original question: are the ethics and compliance efforts at Johnson & Johnson ailing? It appears so. But as the turnarounds at companies like Tyco and Boeing have proven, even sick companies can become well if they take harsh medicine.
Some observers feel that J & J has simply pulled back into a shell in the face of criticism. That is the wrong approach. Ethical leadership cannot be delegated to attorneys, but is the job of the entire executive suite.
The J & J brand remains respected around the world. However, it appears increasingly vulnerable and may be beginning to wane. The good news is that with over $11 billion in annual earnings, the company has the resources to do whatever is necessary.
It is going to take a lot more than a Band-Aid to help it get better, and whether or not Johnson & Johnson will be able to stomach a tough prescription remains to be seen.
PRESCRIPTION FOR IMPROVING J & J’s REPUTATION
1 // INVEST IN QUALITY CONTROL, COMPLIANCE AND ETHICS
It is inexcusable in this day and age for a sophisticated multi-billion global corporation to have a FCPA problem. And quality control problems, such as those pointed out by the FDA in a 2004letter to J & J’s stent-manufacturing subsidiary appear to be a huge distraction to management.
2 // SETTLE THE TEXAS RISPERDAL LAWSUIT
The facts thus far do not look good. Get this behind the company.
3 // SHRINK LEGAL- GROW R&D
The key to growth in medical devices, pharmaceuticals and consumer products is innovation,not lawsuits. When L’Oreal “out-innovated” J & J in sunscreen, J & J’s response was a lawsuit against their advertising claims. J & J has a recent history of acquiring other companies to get new products as opposed to internal development. J & J cannot afford to cutback on R&D. Without innovation J & J will be stuck with continuing to buy the high prices and problems of other companies through acquisitions in order to grow.
4 // LEAD ON SAFE PRODUCT INGREDIENTS
Scrutiny of OTC health and beauty product ingredients has increased in recent years, with newlaws in the EU, Canada and now California. This trend will only increase. J & J could transform itself into the leader for safe product formulations- and its brand would support that. Absent such, it will continue to find itself on the defensive as an inert target.
5 // REFORMULATE OR PULL ORTHO EVRA
It is just not acceptable, by any measure, for young healthy women to die due to a lifestyle convenience product (and alternatives exist). It’s time to reformulate the company’s proprietary patch technology with lower estrogen doses. If that’s not possible, discontinue and get out before brand damage and liability become worse, and more importantly, before many more young women are injured or killed.
6 // IMPROVE WARNING LABELING ON OTC PRODUCTS
With the popularity of Tylenol, this would be a difficult step, unless J & J were to use its leverage to get regulators to require all industry vendors of Acetaminophen (the chemical ingredient in many popular pain relievers) to enact similar more descriptive warning labels.
7 // DISTANCE THE COMPANY FROM RWJF AND VICE-VERSA
The fact that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is caught up in the Texas AG’s lawsuit is embarrassing. The Company and the Foundation should clearly distance themselves- perhaps so far that RWJF divest its substantial stock position.
8 // ENGAGE
J & J is encountering more controversy than ever. Pulling back and relying on historical brand strength is dangerous. In the age of the Internet, news travels fast and opinions can be formed quickly. While a company cannot control the message, it can positively impact it when it takes actions to offset negative position. But it must engage in a productive and transparent manner.
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December 5th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
J&J HR never help you out either. They are the worst company and the public does not even know the truth. I went to HR because my manager kept talking about how my butt looks so good. Do you workout everyday? They get away with anything. I think the day is coming for J&J to fall
November 21st, 2009 at 7:08 pm
I have heard it all while at JnJ too. I have been asked how much child support I get monthyl(at review time). I have been asked if I’ve had plastic “surgury (by my manager). And when I went to HR to tell them how my manager told me that “they never fire anyone because they make it hell & people leave on there own — HR guessed who the manager by name & told me that had already heard that & wanted to know if I had anything else. In other words, when I reached out to JnJ HR — it fell on deaf ears. Manage it or manage out.
January 1st, 2009 at 11:18 am
Is ity true that teh J&J India and China produced sutures, by their subs, are shipped tothe Belgium Logistics center, baptized european and sold in europe as the real thing????
some former employees certainly know…
June 11th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I too worked for a J&J company and can say that the comments from the other posters who have been on the inside are true. J&J is not the company their Credo describes. It is not just corporate that is messed up. I only have experience with one of the companies I worked for that is part of the umbrella of companies and J&J completely messed up that company as well. I can only assume the other 100+ companies they own are also messed up or will be. The company I worked for had kept the family oriented pro employee culture from the former owners for the first couple of years after the purchase, but then slowly the culture died and it became cold and corporate.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:33 am
I hope rwjf and j and j go bankrupt with the fraud they have used and buying off state legislatures to pass smoking bans against the people so that they can profit even more by selling nicotine patches to the public thru state funded cessation programs……….let alone the constitutional rights of the smokers being trampled on in the name OF PSUDO-SCIENCES and the skewed smoking studies they pass off as fact………these studies cant even pass pier review by their own scientists…meanwhile everyone involved in selling false science to the public to further a socialist agenda is guilty of out right TREASON………nobody should believe any supposed scientific study due to the years of skewing the results and falsifying the same reports to achieve a politically correct agenda…………cdc,ama all the pharmecutical companies and smoke free kids ,acs ala the list goes on……..now they are after people of obesity and workig hand in hand with news and media outlets to create hate against people of obesity besides the discrimination smokers have faced becasue of false science.
The day will come when these groups will be held legally accountable for denying people their rights and liberty besides the criminalization for what they have always done or been.
America is not a land of STALIN where we must yield to big govmnt or to the whim of big pharma………we are a free people where individual liberty is the foundation stone that builds greatness for AMERICA not for the benefit of large corporations or political groups………stand up fight oppression and be free again.
April 1st, 2008 at 5:18 am
everything that is being said here is 100% accurate. With regard to the discrimination.
Before I worked at JNJ, my friends joked that I was “to the right of Rush” I was so conservative. However after JNJ I realized that no matter how hard i worked, no matter what I did, i was always going to be seen as a person of color, and more specifically a woman of color, and judged based on all of the stereotypes that come with such, as opposed to my individual value.
That said, I came to the realization, that if excelling at work is “this hard” for me, someone highly educated and experienced, how much more difficult it must be for someone that may be from a less than optimal background that is trying to turn their life around. How difficult it must be to be judged based on ones effort today for so many people.
I openly experienced words (”N), jokes about blacks etc. while working at JNJ. Can you imagine how hard it becomes to come into work everyday, when you are the butt end of a joke that you have no control over? To try to gain respect based on your work but the only thing that ever rises to the top is the one typo you make that immediately gets categorized as “those people not having a good grasp of the English language”? How hard it is to become a part of a team?
Invariably when everyone goes out for drinks after work, I would find an excuse to not be there and not feel uncomfortable around maybe one or two people that I had overheard making these jokes. Then I would get Labeled as “not a team player”.
Then to add insult to injury after I went to HR to make them aware of this situation, the campaign started. A decline in performance reviews stating inability to work well with others, character smears of promiscuity to damage credibility, refusal to support and implement the same policies for advanced education etc.
it was a nightmare, and I thank God that I am gone. In part I blame the media. Everyone publishes the articles that show JNJ in a great light. However I can state for the record that I have contacted so many major newspapers, from the USA Today, to the New York Times, asking the question as to why journalist don’t ask the tough questions.J&J advertises with them so the will not risk the loss in income to write the truth
January 25th, 2008 at 1:36 am
I don’t understand how this company has been allowed to gather the power that it and it’s “policy creating” RWJF has built. Is our government asleep at the wheel or are they part of the payoff? NO company or foundation should be creating the policies of this nation (smoking bans). And absolutely NO company or foundation should be allowed to push their own policy agendas for their profit. This is corruption, plainly and simply put. Why has there been no investigation into them?
Our group out of Ohio is working tirelessly to try to get someone to do something about this. Help us push for a Congressional Hearing into the wrong doings by J&J, RWJF by writing to your Congressman/woman to demand one!! The more of us who ask to have the corruption investigated, the better chance we have of getting it done.
Sign our on-line petition asking for a Congressional Hearing into the RWFJ, J&J, the bogus SHS reports on “studies”.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/conghearing/index.html
September 27th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Can those of us all around the world who have been wronged by J&J while incompetents remain in office and given fat bonuses file a class action lawsuit? Or better yet, can we band together and sell our story for a box office movie?
September 9th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
I had seen this website months ago and am not surprised that comments are still coming through. Every comment on here, I can relate to because I too have seen everything mentioned during my tenure under thier “unbrella” of companies. Regarding comment number 1. They did learn something about discrimination, since that lawsuit they have been careful during layoffs to make sure they don’t, or actually skirt around the issue by keeping at least one minority and one old retched employee that may or may not have the same experience but more so to keep discrimination cases at bay. Any “family” of companies that has thier fraternity of senior management rotate through companies every 2 years is pretty screwed up. They take VP from a medical device area and place them in charge of a pharma company, apples & oranges here, to boost thir own with a complete disregard to the end user, the patient/consumer. There is a whole group of people at the top of thier pyramid that is only concerned about thier own pocketbooks. I mean why get rid of people who know the product or therapy whose salaries do not even come close to those decision makers bonuses? The only answer, they could care less about the end user of thier products. Comment # 2, the only time i have seen them do thier layoffs has been in the middle of the holiday season. not only is it rude but they know darn well they are going to do it months in advance why not do it then, instead of waiting to screw up many a good employees holidays? Oh that’s right because they have to make sure the right people are in place to ensure the right things get done just in time for these jerks to get thier bonuses during the first quarte of the next year, you know February, March. Comment # 3, consumers need to know that product they buy from them isn’t for the consumers best interest, they need to cut costs and pay thier own salaries. Comment # 4, thier credo had to have been written a very long time ago by someone who did have that vision. Unfortunately, the board of directors and senior management only care about thier own pocketbooks. The credo in reality is “We care about money, money in our pockets”. Comment # 5, again it’s only about cutting corners and putting money in the wallets and purses who have the power. Bottom line is, J&J doesn’t have one product that is superior to any single manufacturer of healthcare products. Whether it be a medical device, prescription drug, or consumer product. The problem is, is that the average consumer knows J&J as a household name and doesn’t understand the truth. They can buy toothbrushes, baby products, shampoo, makeup, ect that is far superior than what J&J has. Consumers are the one’s that need to know. And trust me, if it comes down to a medical device, thier products are inferior and what the average consumer does not realize when docs use any companies devices they don’t care too much either about quality, again it’s money in the pocket. Before buying, checkout the competition, not only will you find a better product, but you’ll also find a more knowledgable representative along with better customer service cause all J&J is going to send you is a novice, inexperienced representative because once they keep someone long enough to know the product, they will cut them off at the knees to find someone cheaper and inexperienced just to save themselves a buck. Buyer be ware.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
How J&J can have good product if the process doesn’t right.
One of J&J factory in Indonesia hired my brother through head hunter, after close to one year process he was decide to work for J&J. He was Factory General Manager of one J&J competitor.
He have to pass of 3 month probationer, during the time he find out that the factory work unefficients, the procurement just looking on cheaper price doesn’t mind the quality of material from supplier, and he indicated coruptions in middle management.
He was stressfull during the period and I just advice to wait up to probationer period in the sensitive case.
He can’t wait and decide to open all the case to management and he lost the job.
How J&J can improve the quality of product and efficient cost if doesn’t want to see the real conditions. Reduce cost is right but should be done with correct process and quality.
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I currently work at a J&J plant that was recently purchased by J&J. I have given my all to this company only to recently find out that I along with 340 other dedicated employees will be out of a job. We will be laid off because it is more profitable to send our jobs over seas, never mind the fact that it was the American worker who built this company! The big slap in the face is the J&J company credo: WE ARE RESPONSIBLE TO OUR EMPLOYEES, THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO WORK WITH US THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. EVERYONE MUST BE CONSIDERED AS AN INDIVIDUAL. WE MUST RESPECT THEIR DIGNITY AND RECOGNIZE THEIR MERIT. THEY MUST HAVE A SENSE OF SECURITY IN THEIR JOBS. WE MUST BE MINDFUL OF WAYS TO HELP OUR EMPLOYEES FULFILL THIER FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES. WE MUST PROVIDE COMPETENT MANAGEMENT AND THEIR ACTIONS MUST BE JUST AND ETHICAL….. Well if they feel that taking the livelihoods away from 340 hard working americans so they can further line their fat pockets is just and ethical, they can stick their worthless credo where the sun don’t shine, they don’t have a bandaid big enough for this festering sore!!!
July 21st, 2007 at 7:52 pm
I recently purchased a package of Rembrandt toothpaste; I’ve been using Rembrandt since it was first introduced. The recent packaging change includs not only a totally different box label design, but there are NO SECURITY SEALS on the tube or on the ends of the toothpaste box. The ends of the box are held in place by just a small dot of glue, which anyone could compromise, and the tube has NO SAFETY SEAL over the tube opening. I cannot believe that Johnson & Johnson, in this day and age of tampering, would market a product like this with no safety precautions. I called their 800 number and the person I spoke with requested I return the toothpaste to them; they sent me a refund for the purchase price and also sent me a pre-paid mailer in which to return the product. I will not use their toothpaste again until they put safety seals on the ends of the toothpaste box, like they have in the past.
July 18th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
As an x JNJer I am glad to be out from under their lies. In the midst of a layoff (2004) they told upper management that “things” would not be right until maybe 2008. Then they proceeded to lay a large number of people off within a two week time period just at the Christmas Holiday season. While still promising everyone who was left behind that they have a fabulous “pipeline” of new drugs. They have not had a new drug in years. As a Manager I was constantly hiring people to fill positions left open by people who were just fed up. I knew at the time that I was hiring that there was probably a 95% chance that my new hire would be laid off by the close of the same year. Shameful
July 9th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
It’s been a bumpy road for J&J, and this is only the tip of the iceberg. I hear that there will be additional lawsuits about risperdal.
The product issues are only part of the issues. There are many internal issues which no one outside of J&J hears about. What about the class action racial/gender discrimination lawsuit? J&J came up with a list of managers who are minorities to show that they are not biased in their hiring and promotion practices. However, are all of those managers still with J&J? Probably not. What about all of the longtime, dedicated employees that have been laid off? That number is probably close to a thousand (if not more), and I hear that more layoffs will be forthcoming in the months and years to come. J&J made a lot of promises to some of their employees about longevity of employment, yet, when income targets could not be met, many employees were laid off with only a two week notice so that the quarter end profit margins would look better. It’s not right, and it’s not fair to take away employees’ livelihoods so suddenly, while the senior management gets bonuses equal to 100% of their base salaries and more. Why can’t they take huge salary cuts to save their J&J family members?