3M cuts 1,700 more jobs after selling a business and grappling with virus slowdown

After announcing in January that it would cut about 1,500 jobs in another restructuring, 3M has since moved to eliminate an additional 1,700 positions due to COVID-19 and the sale of its drug delivery business.

During the second quarter, 3M committed to a restructuring directly related to the pandemic and its economic impacts, leading to about 400 job cuts worldwide, the company said in a recently filed report with federal securities regulators.

In addition, about 1,300 jobs were eliminated with the $650 million sale of most of 3M's drug delivery business to Altaris Capital Partners, which closed in May, the filing said.

The business' roughly 900 direct employees in Maplewood remain in the Twin Cities, simply having been transferred from 3M to Altaris' Kindeva Drug Delivery.

But another 1,300 global corporate support positions for the drug delivery business were eliminated because they were no longer needed. All but a handful of those were outside of Minnesota, said Fanna Haile-Selassie, a 3M spokeswoman.

The 400 job cuts due to COVID-19, along with the 1,500 job eliminations announced in January, did not lead to a corresponding number of layoffs due to employee attrition and a hiring freeze, Haile-Selassie said. Instead, about 1,500 in total will be laid off.

Those two rounds of cuts led to fewer than 70 jobs being eliminated at 3M's Maplewood headquarters, she said.

At the start of 2020, 3M had approximately 15,000 employees in the state, of which a little more than 10,500 were based in Maplewood. That made it one of the state's largest private employers.

Last week, 3M reported double-digit declines in second-quarter sales and profits as it was hit hard by the virus-induced economic downturn around the world.

In January, the company announced the 1,500 job cuts over 2020, part of a restructuring of its international operations. At the time, the company was coming off weak results in the last three months of 2018, when it was hurt by diminishing demand in China and declining U.S. industrial sales — particularly in the auto business.

3M in April 2019 announced a restructuring that entailed another 2,000 job cuts.

The company employed 96,163 people at the end of 2019; 41% worked in the United States, according to a federal securities filing. With acquisitions in recent years, that number is up from 93,516 in 2018 and 91,536 in 2017.

Mike Hughlett • 612-673-7003