Former Philips employees back at the old workplace for one morning
EINDHOVEN
Because of corona a small regular group of retirees from Philips's former TQ building had not seen each other for well over one and a half years. Now that it was possible again, Sjef Corstiaans thought it would be nice to pay a visit to the old workplace.
Corstiaans had invited his former colleagues for a tour by Boudie Hoogedeure, who is responsible for promotion and acquisitions at Geva Vastgoed, the current owner of the former Philips site Strijp T. TQ now houses fifty companies that have outgrown the startup phase. "We're completely full now," he says proudly. "The last lease agreement was signed yesterday."
Before he updates the 26 visitors over a cup of coffee about the transition the TQ building has undergone over the past six years, it is a warm reunion for them after one and a half years. Conversations start spontaneously and memories surface, also during the tour in and around the six-storey building. Sometimes they have to be patient, because Hoogedeure does not let the opportunity for promotion pass by. For example, they hear that in the redevelopment sustainability went hand in hand with respect for the building's history and that a running circuit has been laid out in the area to promote the vitality of the users. They are also encouraged to cycle to work. "Then I do notice that our large bicycle parking has disappeared," Corstiaans notes.
PIT
TQ had about a thousand employees in Philips' heyday in the 1980s. "And then you also have to count another 200 in Acht," says Wim Troost, at the time deputy director of the main industrial group PIT (Products for Industrial Applications). "We were active in business-to-business, not with consumer products." He and his colleague Nico Vrijenhoek mention the automation of mail sorting at PTT, others talk about transformers for telephone exchanges. Troost and Vrijenhoek emphasize that TQ was the cradle of later successful companies such as ASML (chip machines), Fluke (measuring instruments) and FEI (electron microscopes).
"Philips provided a scholarship for our children, built houses, provided sports and cultural activities"
Wim Troost
Despite the aforementioned respect, the retirees call the building "unrecognizably changed", but also "beautifully renovated". Gerrie Kersten from the personnel department had to search briefly for the main entrance, which turned out to have been moved. And where the entire sixth floor used to be laid out as a company restaurant for the management and a canteen for the others, people now sit in glass booths to hold meetings or work on their laptops.