Medtronic laying off nearly 100 workers in second round of job cuts of 2019 in Sonoma County

Global medical device maker Medtronic announced Thursday it will lay off nearly 100 ?hourly and salaried workers from its Santa Rosa manufacturing operation, the second round of job cuts since spring when the company said it was displacing up to 100 employees.

The latest layoffs will occur over a four-year period, as Medtronic moves work to a plant in Danvers, Massachusetts, company spokeswoman Wendy Dougherty said.

The employees affected will be able to continue working through May 2020. They will be offered bonuses to remain on the job, she said.

Although Dougherty declined to specify the exact number of people departing, she said they work in the business unit that makes components for catheters used in surgical procedures. It is the only production Medtronic does in Sonoma County.

The latest job cuts won’t affect the company’s two main businesses here: coronary and structural heart and the aortic, peripheral and venous operations.

“We will maintain our significant presence in the area with our Fountaingrove and Brickway facilities,” the spokeswoman said in an email.

In April, Medtronic said it was laying off 85 to 100 hourly and salaried employees from various departments, including research and development, global operations and marketing.

Medtronic employs about 1,100 people at its two campuses in Fountaingrove and one near the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport. The Dublin, Ireland company is one of the largest medical technology and services companies worldwide with $30 billion in revenue in 2018.

Medtronic and Keysight Technologies Inc., the world’s largest electronics measurement company, are the two biggest technology companies in the Sonoma County. They have been a point of pride among elected and business officials for bringing economic diversity to the local economy that has been largely reliant for years on agriculture and tourism.

Despite having Fountaingrove campuses, both companies were largely unscathed by the 2017 wildfires that burned a large swath of the Santa Rosa area including parts of  Fountaingrove.

The Sonoma County Economic Development Board is working on establishing a technology and manufacturing group to help support those companies and recruit more of them to the county. Called the Sonoma County Manufacturing and Technology Alliance, the group will be unveiled next month, said Ethan Brown, program manager for the economic development board.

There are 855 firms doing some form of manufacturing in the county, including wine and beer-related businesses, that employ 19,805 workers and have an annual payroll of $1.3 billion.

“The idea here is to give them a unified voice so on the issues they are facing, they can find some traction,” Brown said.

The alliance also will help to highlight smaller technology and manufacturing companies that may be “somewhat invisible” compared with well-known Keysight and Medtronic, he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Bill Swindell at 707-521-5223 or bill.swindell@pressdemocrat.com.