Nexperia Workers Philippines Inc. Workers Union (NWPIWU)-NAFLU-KMU condemned Nexperia Philippines for the new series of layoffs planned for April to September. The company notified the union on March 4 of a nearly two-week shutdown in one of its areas and the retrenchment of 53 workers. The company said this is just the first in a series of possible layoffs.

“Not having yet recovered from the calamity of the Sensors Department closure when the Power department only absorbed a few, workers now suffered another blow,” the union said. It can be recalled that in 2023 the company fired 495 workers at its factory in the export processing zone in Cabuyao, Laguna on the pretext that the company was losing money. The company also fired on September 22, 2023 eight more workers, including three union officials.

The union said Nexperia’s capitalists seem to be playing a roulette game to choose which workers to fire. “It’s like a roulette of fate where a family goes hungry every time it spins,” he said. “Nexperia is greedy for profit! Workers are treated as machines that are discarded when no longer needed,” the union said angrily.

Nexperia’s planned mass layoff violates the conditions in its collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the union. Currently, Nexperia’s capitalists and the union are in a new round of negotiations for the CBA 2024-2026. It started in the last week of January.

The union also does not believe the company is losing money, used as a pretext for mass layoffs. In fact, they said, “in 2023 Nexperia bought the NOWI company, indicating that the business is growing and our company is definitely not losing.”

Amid all this, the union urged fellow Nexperia workers to unite and fight against mass layoffs. It says the union’s long history has proven that they can achieve a lot if united, like the NXP 24 IBALIC campaign in 2014.

“We call on all Nexperia workers to strengthen our unity, and militantly fight the layoff,” said the union. Addressing the owners of Nexperia, they demanded, “Return the fired workers and we remind you that us workers create your profit, without workers Nexperia will not profit.”

Nexperia Philippines is a subsidiary of the Nexperia company based in The Netherlands. It manufactures semiconductors at its factories in Europe, Asia and the US.