Termination of Employment (PHK) in domestic textile factories is apparently still continuing. Most recently, 6 textile factories laid off workers and laid off thousands of workers. This was conveyed by the President of the Confederation of Indonesian Workers' Unions (KSPN) Ristadi. According to him, the trigger for the ongoing wave of layoffs was various factors, ranging from not being able to survive amidst the onslaught of imported products to the decline in export performance. For this reason, he proposed 10 strategic policies to save the textile and textile products (TPT) and footwear (shoes) industry in the country.

"There are lots of layoffs. Data updates for 2023 layoffs for August-September. This is the latest layoff data apart from the previous data. Yesterday's data was for companies like Mulia Cemerlang Abadi, now they are laying off again, completely closed. This is 2o023," said Ristadi, quoted on Wednesday (5/10/2023).

The following companies carried out layoffs referring to KSPN data:

1. PT Mulia Cemerlang Abadi in Tangerang Regency: closed and laid off a total of 2,600 workers
2. PT Lucky Tekstil in Semarang City: Layoff 100 workers
3. PT Grand Best in Semarang City, laid off 300 workers
4. PT Delta Merlin Tekstil I Duniatex Group in Karanganyar Regency (Central Java): Layoff 660 workers
5. PT Delta Merlin Tekstil II Duniatex Group: Layoff 924 workers
6. PT Pulaumas Tekstil in West Java: laying off 460 workers.

From that figure, a total of 4,584 workers were laid off, while 460 other workers were awaiting their fate when they were laid off.

Ristadi quoted data from the Ministry of Industry (Kemenperin) which noted that throughout 2022 there would be 345,000 layoffs of workers in the national textile industry.

"This condition is still ongoing and there are around 26,540 workers who have been laid off due to layoffs. This is data as of August 2023," said Ristadi.

"This condition is caused by reduced orders or even no orders. It is predicted that the number of layoffs will be much greater because many companies do not report to the government when they carry out layoffs or close factories," he said.

Apart from that, he continued, the invasion of imported textile products has also put pressure on the domestic textile industry.

"There are so many used TPT items from abroad in traditional markets/spill markets whose prices are much cheaper than the production prices of domestic TPT IKMs," he said.

"And, transactions for TPT goods in e-commerce are mostly foreign TPT goods because the prices are cheaper. This is getting bigger day by day, so it is slowly getting rid of local TPT goods, especially from TPT IKMs," he said.

For this reason, he also asked the government to immediately intervene to take steps to save the domestic textile industry.

Ristadi said that there were 10 policies which he thought were strategic for efforts to save the textile industry, namely:

1. The TPT and footwear industry is under the control of one ministry/institution agency
2. Control imports and stop illegal imports
3. Support the modernization of textile industry machines
4. TPT industry vocational program
5. Energy, tax and licensing policies for the textile industry
6. Spatial planning for the textile industry
7. Collect data on the domestic textile industry, including the number of companies, workforce, location distribution, capacity, and target market
8. Industrial relations
9. Restrictions on e-commerce transactions for imported TPT products
10. Law enforcement.