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About 1,000 UK jobs are to be axed as part of the restructuring of the European plane maker Airbus out of a total of 10,000 redundancies across Europe, it was confirmed last night.
The UK job losses will be spread across the 13,000 employees working at the two
main Airbus wing factories in Broughton, north Wales, and Filton, near Bristol.
The Airbus rationalisation plan, codenamed Power 8, is also likely to see outside investment in the Filton plant, with GKN and Finmeccanica, the Italian owner of Westland, named as potential backers.
Details of the critical restructuring plan had been due to be unveiled yesterday but a savage row between the French and German shareholders in EADS, the parent company of Airbus, prevented an announcement.
Alistair Darling, the UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, will meet the German Economy Minister Michael Glos in Berlin today to discuss the latest crisis at Airbus.
A spokeswoman for Mr Darling said: "It is a pre-planned meeting but Airbus is obviously on the agenda."
Meanwhile, Louis Gallois, the chief executive of Airbus and co-chief executive of EADS, has agreed to revise the Power 8 plan so that France shares more of the high-technology development work on the new A350 XWB wide-bodied jet with the other partners.
Agreement on the restructuring broke down on Sunday night after DaimlerChrysler, the biggest EADS shareholder with a 22.5 per cent stake, refused to sign off on the Power 8 programme.
The UK has lost its battle for Airbus to agree a £100m investment in new composite technology at Filton for future generations of jets but it is hoped that GKN and Finmeccanica will be able to provide the expertise instead.
The bulk of the 10,000 job losses will be in France, which makes the Airbus cockpit and carries out final assembly, and Germany, which makes most of the fuselage.
There is also the possibility of some plants on the Continent being closed or sold off altogether.
Tom Enders, the other co-chief executive at EADS, had objected to the Power 8 programme on the grounds that the French were not sharing the pain and the gain evenly.
- INDEPENDENT
