Singapore – Multinational company Dyson has laid off several employees in its main headquarters at Singapore, and follows a recent job cut by the company involving 1,000 employees in Britain.

Dyson has confirmed the news to MARKETECH APAC when reached out to.

“We constantly evolve the composition of our teams and take steps to ensure we have the right skills in the right places. Our ambitions in Singapore remain unchanged, and we anticipate that we will continue to grow here in the medium term,” a company spokesperson told MARKETECH APAC.

Dyson didn’t comment further on the number of employees affected by the layoffs, or which departments the employees are from.

The layoffs are done despite the local employee headcount growing to 35% by 2023, and is expected that Dyson’s total footprint in Singapore will grow in the medium term. Moreover, Singapore–being the company’s headquarters–sits at the centre of Dyson’s research and advanced manufacturing ecosystem.

Following this update, the United Workers of Electronics and Electrical Industries (UWEEI) has expressed disappointment with the company’s one-day notice regarding the retrenchment exercise. For Patrick Tay, executive secretary at UWEEI, this left insufficient time for meaningful discussion between both parties. The union has since then escalated the matter to the Ministry of Manpower.

“The union understands that the affected workers fall outside its scope of representation under the Collective Agreement with Dyson. Nonetheless, UWEEI stands ready to support affected workers,” Tay said in a media statement sent over to MARKETECH APAC.

With this, UWEEI is teaming up with NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) to assist affected workers for new employment opportunities, job matching, and will support them with career coaching and job training, where needed. 

UWEEI members may also tap on the Union Training Assistance Programme (UTAP) fund to offset training courses should they require skills upgrading. It will also assist members who may face financial hardship via their various assistance programmes. 

The union has also reminded companies to observe the guiding principles outlined in NTUC’s Fair Retrenchment Framework (as of 24 July 2020) and the Tripartite Advisory on Managing Excess Manpower and Responsible Retrenchment, and are necessary to ensure that a fair and balanced retrenchment exercise has been undertaken by companies.

“Unionised companies should work with their unions in a timely manner to ensure that a fair and equitable process is carried out to safeguard the interests of all workers, especially our Singaporean core,” Tay added.

Manila, Philippines – Multinational technology company Dyson has announced that its pledging ₱11b investment to the Philippines by 2024. This comes after several Dyson officials met with Philippine government officials, led by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.

The president has expressed his delight following Dyson’s investment commitment, stating that the company has made the right decision in choosing the country for their investments.

Meanwhile, Roland Krueger, chief executive officer at Dyson, commented, “Three, four months ago, we made a decision that we want to further our investment to the Philippines with expanding our presence there and today we only have a factory producing our own electrical motors.”

He added, “So we have announced a significant investment equivalent of PhP11-billion into the new factory, the new R&D center, and we want to expand also in terms of staff, software, and others that we require over the next two years.”

Dyson also emphasised that their investment would generate around 1,250 employees and would move more contract manufacturing into the Philippines by the middle of 2022, or the second or third quarter of the year.

It is worth noting that Dyson previously announced the intended launch of its Philippines Technology Centre, amounting to ₱11b in investment, and will be located in City of Sto. Tomas, Batangas; scheduled to be operational by the first half of 2024.

With this, Dyson R&D (research and development) teams in the Philippines will be focused on software, AI, robotics, fluid dynamics and hardware electronics, according to the company.