Recently there has been widespread news about the issue of massive layoffs (PHK) in labor-intensive industries. Responding to this, the Minister of Investment / Head of the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) Bahlil Lahadalia said the layoffs were due to the impact of the company's relocation. "I checked, yes it is indeed closed but only relocation," said Bahlil, Tuesday (11/15). According to him, the relocation of the company is not a big problem. Moreover, relocation is still being carried out in Indonesian territory.

For example, this occurred in a shoe and clothing factory in West Java that was laying off employees because they were going to move to the Central Java region.

Therefore, he said that even though there were layoffs, new jobs would still be created in other regions.

"Yes, for me as long as it's still producing in Indonesia, it's okay," said Bahlil.

Previously, the Ministry of Manpower (Kemnaker) said the number of layoffs as of September 2022 reached 10,765 reports, the most in labor-intensive industries.

The Director General of Industrial Relations Development and Labor Social Security (PHI and Jamsos) of the Ministry of Manpower, Indah Anggoro Putri, said that a number of reasons for the recent layoffs include the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic which is still being felt, business transformation in the digitalization era, to global geopolitics which has had an impact on on the weakening purchasing power of a number of export destination countries for Indonesian products.

In order to prevent an increasing number of layoffs and industrial relations disputes, Putri added, her party would continue to make efforts including encouraging bipartite dialogue between management/business actors and trade unions/labor unions (SP/SB), especially in the labor-intensive oriented industrial sector. export and digital platform-based industries.

"This dialogue aims to find common ground for obstacles at the company level that will have an impact on layoffs and industrial relations disputes," he said.