Dutch electronics giant Philips is planning to lay off more than 6,000 employees worldwide to cut back on costs. It will be one of the largest dismissals of workers in the firm’s long history.
It has not yet been announced where the job losses will occur, but about 1,100 jobs are set to disappear in the Netherlands, according to the Algemene Dagblad.
Most of these layoffs will reportedly occur within the company’s research facilities in the south of the country, including the R&D campus in Eindhoven, as well as at its Amsterdam headquarters.
“Philips will focus on a smaller range of promising products, rather than favoring well-diversified portfolios,” CNV labor union chief Arjan Huizinga told the Leeuwarder Courant.
According to Huizinga, the company has no plans to lay off workers at its production facilities, such as the factory in Best (North Brabant) that manufactures medical equipment or the site in Drachten that produces popular shavers and electric toothbrushes.
About 2000 people are employed by Philips in Drachten. “The factory is running well, but Philips may trim some management layers there,” says Huizinga.
The news comes in line with Philips’ net loss of €1.6 billion in 2022, down from a net profit of €3.3 billion a year earlier.
The slump in profit forced the company to shed 4,000 staff last October.
Philips has a global workforce of around 80,000 and always said redundancies were unavoidable. The workforce in the Netherlands totals some 11,000, based primarily in Eindhoven, Best and Drachten. Half of the job cuts will be made this year, the company said, adding that the other half will be realized by the end of 2024.
The tech sector is undergoing a major shift as Philips joins a number of other multinational companies in announcing major layoffs.
Big Silicon Valley tech firms Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon and Meta have collectively laid off more than 100,000 employees in recent months, and many believe more layoffs are yet to come.
