According to Jaroslav Souček, chairman of the KOVO trade union, the Japanese Panasonic is ending the production of televisions in the factory in Pilsen. 900 to 1,000 people are expected to lose their jobs in the factory by March 31, 2022. Souček said this at a meeting of the board of the KOVO association in Hradec Králové.
According to the chairman of the company’s departments, Jan Dvořák, 450 regular employees will lose their jobs, the rest are agency workers. According to employees, the reason is the reduced demand for televisions in general, Dvořák said.
“The television market is declining from year to year. We expected it to come, but only in the horizon of three to five years, but covid accelerated it,” said Dvořák. Souček described the termination of TV production in Pilsen as a strategic decision of a multinational company, in which the current lack of chips could also play a role. 300 to 370 people will remain in the factory, producing heat pumps and blu-ray players and recorders. According to Dvořák, it is unlikely that the company would leave Pilsen, where it started producing TVs 25 years ago.
According to Dvořák, Panasonic employed 7,500 people in Pilsen in the heyday, roughly in 2006 and 2007, of which about 2,500 were regular employees. At that time, it produced about 1.5 million TVs, about half last year.
Panasonic AVC Networks Czech stated in its annual report for 2020 that revenues from the sale of televisions accounted for 78 percent of its turnover. Sales of heat pumps accounted for 14 percent of sales, video technology for six percent, and the company received two percent from sales of spare parts and services.
Last year, the company’s revenues fell by 26 percent to 8.98 billion crowns, of which over 99 percent came from exports. Last year, the company’s net profit rose to 324 million crowns from 306 million crowns the year before. Last year, the company employed an average of 819 people, down 89 less year-on-year.
Panasonic AVC Networks Czech opened a television factory in Pilsen in 1997. At that time, it was the first strong and well-known Japanese investor to open its doors to the Czech Republic to other Japanese companies. In addition to Pilsen, Panasonic has a production plant for the production of car radios in Pardubice in the Czech Republic.
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