The government is giving counseling and retraining to “about 60,000 workers that could be affected nationwide” in the electronics industry as factories close down or cut workforces amid a deepening global recession, the secretary of labor said Thursday.

The labor department is “getting daily notices now not only of retrenchments but also of reduction of work shifts, reduction of working hours and compression of the workweek,” Secretary Marianito Roque said.

“The semiconductor industry is already getting hit,” Roque said in a television interview Thursday.

“We have seen this as early as three months ago,” he said. “We expected that we’ll be getting hit in the first semester of this year.”

Plants employing 19,000 people have so far reduced shifts or working hours, Roque said. He did not say how many had been laid off.

The job cuts highlight the poor state of the electronics industry and could be the beginning of a wave of job losses in the sector.

“We have to admit that this is not business as usual in the Philippines for the electronics sector and in the garments sector as well,” Roque said. “These will be the two particular areas that would be affected by the global financial crisis.”

Full Story