Philips Respironics to Cut 300, Close Pittsburgh Headquarters

After over 15 years as a mainstay in Pittsburgh, PA, Phillips Respironics has announced plans to cut 300 manufacturing jobs in the Western part of the state and relocate about 500 employees from its Pittsburgh headquarters to its centers in Murrysville and New Kensington. According to a company statement shared with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Philips said it will leave its Bakery Square building starting in Q424, moving workers over to the two centers in nearby suburbs over two years.

As part of the announcement, Philips said it will also mostly end manufacturing at its Murrysville and New Kensington plants in 2025, instead transferring the work to an undisclosed contact manufacturer. The company changes are expected to leave about 900 jobs remaining in the region. Employees at its Mount Pleasant facility will reportedly not be impacted by the restructuring.

The news comes after the company’s 2021 recall of over 5.5 million respiratory devices found that the sound abatement foam used would degrade and enter the airway, potentially causing severe health outcomes. In January 2024, Philips discontinued US sales of several of its respiratory device product lines, and it was only in April, three years after the recall began, that Philips came to a consent decree agreement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and FDA, agreeing to not sell or distribute any new respiratory devices as it worked to meet the terms set forth by the governmental agencies.

Outside of the consent decree, DOJ continues to probe Philips Respironics for potential criminal responsibility in how it handed the crisis, as well as whether executives hid knowledge of device breakdowns as much as 10 years before the machines were recalled, according to a 2023 investigation by the Post-Gazette and ProPublica.

Philips said the restructuring would help restore the position of the business with a smaller and more focused product portfolio. It is currently unclear what the company will garner in severance costs, and savings from building shutdowns.