Some workers at Geneva’s Merck Serono headquarters have started a petition against plans to close the site.

Labor union Unia and employees claim in the petition that including suppliers and temporary workers, 1,500 positions would be “sacrificed on the altar of profit.”

The groups want the petition to pressure authorities to negotiate over the plan to move the functions of the Geneva site to Germany.

One thousand two hundred and fifty jobs would leave Geneva, though Merck Serono said more than half of those workers would be offered jobs abroad.