The manufacturing plant Honda has run in Laguna for nearly three decades is shutting down, and 387 workers will lose their jobs as soon as next month after the company made the announcement with almost no warning on Saturday.
Honda Cars Philippines said in a statement that the decision followed a review of how to optimize production across Asia and Oceania. The company framed the closure as a way “to meet Honda’s customer needs in the Philippines for reasonably priced and good quality products.”
For communities tied to the plant, the arithmetic is hard to soften. The workers are expected to receive generous separation packages, according to local automotive site Visor, but the jobs themselves are going.
The plant opened in 1992 and now builds two models, the BR-V and the City. It closes after two difficult years: Honda’s volume sales fell 26.7 percent in 2018 to 23,294 units, then slid again in 2019, by close to 13 percent, to 20,338 units, according to industry data. The slide tracks a wider market hit after the government raised excise taxes on new vehicles in 2018 while inflation squeezed consumer demand.
What it means for people reaches beyond one factory. The Philippine Metalworkers Alliance, which counts roughly 13,000 unionized workers among its members, filed a petition last August seeking safeguard measures against vehicle imports it says have cost local jobs. The group told the Department of Trade and Industry that the industry shed more than 32 percent of its workforce between 2015 and 2018, from 86,428 to 57,982, citing government statistics.
“Regardless where they manufacture their cars, they will still have the profit. But in our case, the injury is on the workers because we are losing our jobs,” Reynaldo Rasing, the PMA’s secretary general, told the Inquirer.
The trade department opened a preliminary safeguard investigation earlier this month, the first such case filed not by carmakers but by a labor group.
Sources
- Honda to shut down Laguna plant | Inquirer Business
- Honda Closes Laguna Plant, Price Cap On Medications, Tax-Evading POGOs, And Other Financial News
