The mass layoffs at Philips have raised eyebrows among the board of Eindhoven University of Technology. Chairman of the Board Robert-Jan Smits expresses his concerns.
In particular, the many redundancies planned at Philips Research are viewed with concern by Smits. So he says to the Cursor, the university’s news platform.
TU/e has a special relationship with Philips. The company was one of the parties that argued for the establishment of the educational institution in the 1960s. TU/e and Philips worked and still work closely together in numerous partnerships. However, that’s not the only reason he’s concerned.
The ‘innovative power of the Netherlands’ would also be at stake, says Smits, who thinks that TU/e can help prevent technical talent from leaving the region due to the mass layoffs.
Knowledge worker scheme
“We have to consider whether we can set up some kind of knowledge worker scheme again to retain talent in a productive way, by moving them temporarily to knowledge institutions such as TU/e. They are certainly very welcome with us,” says Smits.
Such a scheme was also started in 2009 to retain knowledge workers for the region, who lost their jobs due to the economic crisis. TU/e was able to temporarily retain some 900 knowledge workers with this arrangement.
Source: Studio040
For Eindhoven News: Lila Mehrez
