Sanofi is fac­ing down a strike threat in Ko­rea amid an in­creas­ing num­ber of con­fronta­tions be­tween Big Phar­ma and their la­bor unions over pay de­mands.

A Ko­re­an pub­li­ca­tion cites la­bor of­fi­cials who have been un­hap­py over the com­pa­ny’s of­fer of a 1.5% in­crease in pay, in keep­ing with in­fla­tion. They cite their own in­fla­tion num­bers as well as in­creas­es in Ko­re­an sales dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, orig­i­nal­ly seek­ing a 7% pay hike and then low­er­ing the de­mand to 4%.

Sanofi, they tell the Ko­rea Bio­med­ical Re­view, has flat­ly re­fused. And now the union lead­ers say they’ll go on strike un­less Sanofi comes through.

“As the NL­RC me­di­a­tion fell through on May 11, the union se­cured the right to go on a strike with the 97 per­cent sup­port of union­ized work­ers at our gen­er­al as­sem­bly,” union leader Park Young told the news­pa­per, adding that the union would con­tin­ue to mount protests at the com­pa­ny’s head­quar­ters.

Sanofi has long had a con­tentious his­to­ry with unions in France, which bear con­sid­er­able in­flu­ence on the gov­ern­ment. Last year the union used that in­flu­ence to warn against any forced lay­offs.

But union is­sues aren’t iso­lat­ed to Sanofi. GSK re­cent­ly faced down a strike threat in the UK over a re­bel­lion against its 2.75% pay of­fer but avert­ed a strike with their of­fer to raise that to 4.5%.

Astellas and Sutro Biopharma are linking arms on a new field of antibody-drug conjugates that they hope will improve upon existing cancer immunotherapies.

The Tokyo pharma will dole out $90 million in cash for the collaboration, the companies said Monday afternoon. That upfront payment will extend the South San Francisco biotech’s runway from late 2023 into the first half of 2024, Cowen analysts noted.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Some Celgene shareholders aren’t happy with how Bristol Myers Squibb’s takeover went down.

On Friday, a New York federal judge ruled that they have a case against the pharma giant, denying a request to dismiss allegations that it purposely slow-rolled Breyanzi’s approval to avoid paying out $6.4 billion in contingent value rights (CVR).

When Bristol Myers put down $74 billion to scoop up Celgene back in 2019, liso-cel — the CAR-T lymphoma treatment now marketed as Breyanzi — was supposedly one of the centerpieces of the deal. After going back and forth on negotiations for about six months, BMS put $6.4 billion into a CVR agreement that required an FDA approval for Zeposia, Breyanzi and Abecma, each by an established date.