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Airbus confirms plan to cut 10,000 jobs

Airbus will cut 10,000 jobs over four years, parent company EADS said yesterday as it unveiled a restructuring plan aimed at helping the planemaker recover after delays to its A380 superjumbo and other setbacks, as workers staged stoppages in protest at the cuts.

Airbusr briefed unions on plans to sell part or all of its Meaulte and Saint-Nazaire-Ville sites in France as well as Germany's Nordenham and Varel facilities and Filton in Britain, France's Force Ouvriere and CGT unions both said.

A third German site in Laupheim could also be sold, CGT official Xavier Petrachi said.

Airbus chief executive Louis Gallois outlined steps which will include cutting 5,000 Airbus staff and 5,000 workers contracted from other firms, Petrachi said following a meeting with Gallois.

Airbus is seeking investors to run some of the sites as suppliers to Airbus jet programs, said a person close to the company, who asked not to be named because the plan had yet to be announced.

Approximately 4,300 of the job cuts to be made in France, 3,900 in Germany, 1,000-1,500 in Britain and 500 in Spain, the person said.

Airbus currently employs about 56,000 people.

First announced last year after a two-year production delay to the double-decker A380 wiped 5 billion euros (US$6.6 billion) off profit forecasts for 2006-2010, the so-called "Power8" program aims to claw back the same figure in cost reductions over the period and generate 2.1 billion euros in annual savings in later years.

Airbus has been badly hit by the weakness of the US dollar -- the currency in which its planes are priced -- and is expected to shift more of its supplier costs and contract work to dollar-linked economies as part of the restructuring effort.

It also has to fund development of the A350, its 11.6 billion euro answer to the runaway success of US rival Boeing Co's 787 in the lucrative market for long-range, mid-sized planes.

Under the plan, final assembly of the A350 will be based exclusively in France, the person close to Airbus and a German official familiar with the discussions both said -- instead of being split between Germany and France as programs traditionally have been. In return, a future revamp of the single-aisle A320 plane will be assembled in Germany.

The A350's increased use of composites had cast a cloud over the future of Germany's Nordenham plant, where over 2,100 workers produce metal fuselage panels for current Airbus models.

The Meaulte plant in northern France, which produces the front fuselage sections for Airbus planes, ground to a halt yesterday as workers walked out to await news of the restructuring measures.

The head of the European works council warned of wider walkouts.

"It will be a [call to] strike, but perhaps a strike is not enough. Airbus is following the route of Boeing to more outsourcing," European works council Chairman Jean-Francois Knepper told France's LCI TV before the meeting with Gallois.

Germany said yesterday the planned job cuts and factory had succeeded in maintaining a balance between France and Germany.

Sources close to the talks said British and Spanish leaders had also fought hard to safeguard thousands of Airbus jobs in their countries.
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