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PARIS - France's prime minister defended thousands of job cuts at European planemaker Airbus overnight, but unions threatened to vent their anger during forthcoming French elections, and factory stoppages spread in Germany.
The announcement on Wednesday of 10,000 job losses, including 4300 in France, put one of the key issues worrying the French -- chronic unemployment -- center-stage in France's presidential election race.
"This plan is necessary to definitively end the situation of uncertainty and prepare for the future," Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told a regular government briefing.
France-based Airbus plans to sell all or part of six European plants to cut costs after sacrificing 5 billion euros in future profits due to delays to its A380 superjumbo.
In a measure of the political dimension the crisis has assumed ahead of presidential elections in April and May, Socialist candidate Segolene Royal lambasted the government and pledged to revisit the whole issue if she is elected.
"If the French place their trust in us, we will have a complete rethink of the Airbus dossier," she said.
"Tomorrow, the state will assume its full responsibility as a shareholder," she said, although she did not repeat her earlier pledge of a moratorium on the job cuts if elected.
The planned job losses will come through attrition and early retirement -- 5,000 at the planemaker and another 5,000 at its contractors. Airbus has warned, however, there could be forced layoffs should the company's fortunes worsen in 12 to 18 months.
The EADS unit says its survival is at stake as US rival Boeing Co. surges ahead.
Conservative front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy said the state should not interfere in Airbus but added later he would meet unions, which are lobbying each candidate in the April/May poll, and told French radio he would not abandon the company.
"Airbus is an exceptional success, a formidable asset for our economy, I am not minded to drop it," he said.
Anger swept through Airbus plants in Germany on Thursday and three French unions called a strike for March 6. Three German plants slated for full or partial sale stopped work.
They included the small German town of Laupheim, where the economy stands to be hit hard by the unexpected sale of a 1,200-worker plant that equips VIP cabins for the super-rich.
"We are standing on a precipice," said Airbus worker Harald Wiedemann. "Nobody knows what is going to happen."
Germany's Handelsblatt and France's La Tribune reported that some French regions were considering plans to take a stake in EADS to ensure their interests were represented.
Villepin, whose premiership began in 2005 with a fanfare over "economic patriotism" to defend French interests and jobs, said the state's job was to support rather than replace firms.
"That is the notion that I have of an ambitious industrial policy. That is the notion of economic patriotism."
France owns 15 per cent of Airbus parent EADS. Its power to intervene is curtailed by a shareholder pact, but Airbus' political masters often apply pressure informally.
"They can make things difficult," an Airbus official said.
European Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said governments had peered over Airbus' shoulder for too long.
Villepin said the French government would provide 100 million euros ($193 million) in aid to the carbon fibre sector, an area vital to its next plane project, the A350.
Airbus' woes also include a weak dollar and years of nationalist infighting that led to duplication of jobs.
Investors signalled fears about whether EADS would stand firm on cuts by driving down its shares 5 per cent to 24.7 euros.
- REUTERS
