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Photo / Laurie Schreiber
Jackson Laboratory's new Ellsworth facility has begun colonization and production of lab mice.
With Jackson Laboratory’s Ellsworth operations well underway, the nonprofit biomedical research institution says it will now hire 300 new employees.
Of the new hires, 200 will be in animal care. The lab’s entry-level wage will be $15.75 per hour, following the completion of training. The training wage will be $15 per hour. Employees will receive regularly scheduled pay increases with the ability to increase base salary by up to 25% in two years.
New animal care employees who relocate from a distance of more than 50 miles to work at the lab’s Bar Harbor or Ellsworth campuses will receive a $2,500 relocation bonus and a $3,000 bonus after one year on the job.
Educational opportunities are available to all employees, including genetics, lab animal science, onsite leadership courses, extensive hands-on training and tuition reimbursement for associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degree programs.
“Investments in infrastructure and workforce development are critical to the growth and prosperity of Maine communities,” Catherine Longley, executive vice president and chief operating officer, said in the release. “We are proud to be able to offer new career, wage, education and training opportunities to potential employees within the state and to attract employees from locations outside Maine.”
The lab’s mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the quest to improve human health.
Longley told Mainebiz that Jackson Lab now has 50 people working at its Ellsworth mouse production facility, called a “vivarium,” and 1,470 in Bar Harbor.
Of the 200 new employees that will work in animal care, 35 to 40 will be in Ellsworth and the rest in Bar Harbor, said Longley.
Recruitment strategies include local radio ads, working with local high schools, technical colleges and the university system, online and social media recruitment, and collaboration with workforce forums in Maine such as Educate Maine.
Wages offered will be higher than in the past. Up to now, the institution's entry-level wage had been $15.
“For Maine, we have a very competitive hourly wage structure,” Longley said.
One hundred new hires are also planned for positions in administration, finance, information technology, science and more, she said.
“We have less of an issue hiring on the science side,” she said. “In those cases, we also offer relocation benefits and competitive salaries and very good benefits.”
The plan is to have all 300 people hired within the coming year, she said.
Overall, she said, the new hires mean the lab is increasing mouse production over what it produces today.
“Demand for research mice has gone up consistently over the last decade,” she said. “We ship about 3 million mice per year. Ellsworth will increase our capacity.”
About three-quarters of the lab’s revenue comes from the sale of mice and from related services, she said.
Mouse care has evolved over time, and new hires will be trained according to the latest protocols, she said. The new Ellsworth facility, called the Charles E. Hewett Center, is one of the most highly automated vivaria in the world, she said. Innovations include individually ventilated caging with fail-safe features for power outages, next-generation HEPA-filtered workstations with individual airlocks for the automated introduction of sterile caging and supplies, personnel entry procedures and clean-room garb, and “just in time” sterile supplies.
The 134,900-square-foot Hewett Center opened last August, with an investment of $150 million investment for phases 1 and 2. The lab also has facilities in Sacramento, Calif., and Farmington, Conn., Jackson Lab. Mouse production will be entirely moved from the lab’s Bar Harbor facility to Ellsworth. The actual number of mice to be transported will not be large, since it will only involve the breeders, with colonies built from there. The space freed up in Bar Harbor is expected to be redeveloped for research and education.
The Hewett center went into production with the start of its first colonies in December; its first shipments were made in 2019, Longley said.
The second phase of construction has begun with the addition of more rooms for production.
“That project just kicked off and will be finished 2021,” she said.
No further construction phases are funded at this point, she said.
More information is available here.
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