West Virginia residents know it is more than just the long-flailing coal industry putting a pause on our economic growth. Other jobs are disappearing, too, as evidenced by the loss last week of 1,500 pharmaceutical plant jobs at the Viatris (Mylan) plant in Morgantown.
Labor groups asked President Joe Biden to save those jobs, free market be darned. Biden inherited a problem that began more than a year ago when Upjohn and Mylan merged to form Viatris, and then announced it would cut 20% of its workforce worldwide. Rachel Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Association for Accessible Medicine, told the Associated Press the loss of the Morgantown plant will not be a major blow to domestic production, as despite consolidation throughout the industry there are nearly 150 manufacturing sites remaining in the U.S.
Still, Sanders and Co. believe the federal government should pull some strings. Advocates want Biden to use the Defense Production Act to reopen the plant.
"Once a new strategy is in place that aligns the plant's physical assets with our national interests, the plant can be retrofitted as needed and current workers can be rehired," said a letter to Biden.
Of course it would be wonderful if another employer could find a way to retrofit, rehire, retrain and reopen, to save those 1,500 jobs. Development officials in Monongalia County should be scrambling to find a private company willing to run a facility here.
But we've done a bad job over the past few years of portraying ourselves as the kind of state on which a major employer would be willing to take a chance -- even in a place like Morgantown. It is not the federal government's responsibility to clean up that mess.
Officials here should be taking an honest look at the situation and working toward a solution that creates opportunities not just for the 1,500 people who may lose their jobs in Morgantown, but for all of us.