Airbus confirms 10,000 job cuts and unions vow protests
PARIS: The confirmation by Airbus on Wednesday of its plans to shed 10,000 jobs and sell as many as six factories over the next three to four years raised the specter of labor action by the company's unions across Europe.
Union officials said nearly 14,000 employees at four French sites, both blue- collar and white-collar workers, stopped work for up to two hours Wednesday afternoon to protest the cuts. The cuts are part of a turnaround plan aimed at achieving billions of euros in savings amid costly delays to the flagship A380 superjumbo, a weak dollar cutting into profits, and the need to meet the challenge from a resurgent Boeing.
"The response has been massive," said Julien Talavan, a spokesman for Force Ouvrière, the main Airbus union in France. "This is just the beginning."
He added that French and German workers were discussing the possibility of coordinated protests in mid-March.
"We will not simply accept the concept of the EADS board," said Rüdiger Lütjen, the head of the Airbus Germany works council, referring to European Aeronautic Defense & Space, the parent of Airbus, which unanimously approved the restructuring plan on Monday. "We will fight for every job."
Louis Gallois, the Airbus chief executive, said the company expected to eliminate around 4,300 jobs in France, 3,700 in Germany, 1,600 in Britain and 400 in Spain. He said about half of those cuts would come from in-house subcontractors and temporary workers, limiting the losses among Airbus employees to 5,000, or 9 percent of the total European work force of 55,000. Gallois said the company expected the cost of these job cuts to be around €680 million, or $900 million.
He emphasized that Airbus would seek to achieve the cuts through attrition, early retirements and other negotiated voluntary severance agreements. But Gallois did not rule out the possibility of forced layoffs if these measures failed to achieve the desired reductions.
The painful measures at Airbus follow a devastating two-year delay in deliveries of the A380, the result of manufacturing problems linked to the installation of the plane's electrical wiring. Last month, the company said the delays, combined with the weakness of the dollar versus the euro, would push Airbus into a significant financial loss for 2006. Commercial planes are priced in dollars internationally, but most of Airbus's costs are in euros.
On Wednesday, Gallois emphasized the impact of exchange rates and argued that European Central Bank policies favoring a stronger euro had worsened Airbus's financial troubles.
"A strong euro is a choice," Gallois said. "Unfortunately, I am not in charge of the currency policy of Europe."
In addition to the job cuts, Airbus said it was already in discussions with third-party investors about the sale of three factories: a wing-assembly plant in Filton, England; a nose and cockpit assembly site in Méaulte, France; and a fuselage shell manufacturing site in Nordenham, Germany. Three other sites — in Laupheim and Varel, Germany, and Saint-Nazaire, France — are also expected to be spun off.
Airbus said it was considering several options, including outright sales or a management buyouts. "Options will be examined on a case-by-case basis," the company said.
Airbus said that the eight-point restructuring plan would also involve a redistribution of future production among its plants to increase efficiency.
On the future of the midsize jet A350- XWB, France and Germany would each receive 35 percent of the workload, while 20 percent of the work on the plan would go to Britain and 10 percent to Spain, the company said. The high-profile final assembly work on the A350 will take place at Airbus headquarters, in Toulouse, France.
Meanwhile, all work on the company's popular A320 family of single- aisle aircraft will gradually be migrated to sites in and around Hamburg, with an eye to eventually locating all work on the next-generation A320s there.
German official faults Royal
Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist presidential nominee, made a "fatal signal" in calling for changes in Airbus management to avert job cuts, a German government official said Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported from Berlin.
Royal told the French television station i$>Tele that if elected, she would seek support from the Chancellor Angela Merkel to solve "a crisis in command" at Airbus.
The official, Peter Hintze, the newly appointed German aerospace envoy, said during an interview: "I consider this a fatal signal. Airbus is a European project that needs the backing of governments involved." Airbus, he added, needs "reliability from politics — that's why I'm concerned about Royal's remarks."
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'''Airbus''', le plus gros avionneur d'Europe, a annoncé hier la suppression de  emplois dans les 4 prochaines années. La nouvelle est venue alors que sa compagnie-mère, , débute un programme de restructuration majeur pour cause d'efficacité insuffisante.

Louis Gallois, PDG d'Airbus, a indiqué lors d'une conférence de presse que la compagnie devrait répartir les suppressions de postes de la manière suivante : environ  emplois en France,  en Allemagne, 1600 au Royaume-Uni et 400 en Espagne. Environ la moitié de ces suppressions toucheront les sous-traitants et les emplois temporaires. La suppression de postes réelle pour Airbus sera d'environ  emplois, soit 9 % des  employés à plein temps d'Airbus.

Bien que Louis Gallois ait indiqué espérer mener à bien cette réforme sans licenciement sec, les syndicats ont manifesté leur désaccord. Les dirigeants syndicaux ont indiqué qu'environ  salariés des 4 sites de production français ont débrayé pendant deux heures mercredi après-midi afin de protester contre les suppressions d'emploi.

, a déclaré Julien Talavan, un porte-parole de Force Ouvrière, le principal syndicat d'Airbus en France.  a-t-il précisé, renvoyant à de futures actions.

Ce mouvement intervient après les retards très médiatisés dans la production du super-jumbo long-courrier commercial A380. La restructuration annoncée devrait comprend aussi les propositions de vente ou de fermeture de trois usines.