There are concerns at the CNV trade union about the wave of layoffs at Philips in the Netherlands. On Monday morning, the company announced that at least 400 employees will be made redundant. The Eindhoven region will also be affected by job cuts. “This is causing a lot of unrest at all branches.”
Philips says that employment cuts will primarily occur in the support services and offices. This means production or the research branch are likely to be unaffected. But there are no certainties yet about where exactly the blows will fall , says a spokesperson: “We have to make choices. What will we still be doing and what will stop”.
Work pressure
That lack of clarity is precisely the concern of CNV. “This is a purely cost-driven reorganisation”, says union director Arjan Huizinga. “Philips decide to cut a significant number of jobs consider how only afterwards. The people currently doing the work will disappear from their spot, but the work will not. So that work will soon have to be done by fewer people. And that while the work pressure is already so high. This is a very dire situation.”
Affected region
In the Netherlands, 800 of the total 11,000 jobs will be cut. Half of those 800 jobs are ‘natural turnover’, such as temporary contracts that are not renewed and vacancies that are scrapped. According to a Philips spokesperson, there will be redundancies in the Eindhoven region also. How many is not clear. It concerns dozens of jobs. Philips is active in the region at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven and the Health Campus in Best.
Confidence
The reorganization plans are not good for the employees’ confidence in the company, Huizinga emphasises. “Philips IT is already undergoing a reorganisation and now this operation is added. People are losing faith a bit. Where does it stop?”
There is a social plan for employees who lose their jobs. People will be guided in their searches for new work.
Source: Studio040.nl
Translated by: Louise
