Johnson & Johnson plans to cut up to 7 per cent of its workforce in order to generate cost savings needed to finance increasingly costly drug research and to weather future challenges, the diversified healthcare company said yesterday. Johnson, the largest shareholder in Irish drug group Elan, said the planned restructuring will eliminate 7,000 to 8,000 jobs and generate annualised cost savings of $1.4 billion (€951 million) to $1.7 billion by 2011.