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Airbus will slash 10,000 jobs and sell all or part of six factories, it confirmed yesterday, as workers protested and politicians hailed a hard-fought compromise.
Airbus chief executive Louis Gallois set forth a stark vision of a Franco-German company that needed to find billions of euros in savings and leave behind nationalist infighting he deemed "poison".
"We need to be interested in the future of Airbus and for that we need to be one integrated company," he said of a company whose push for reforms had dominated a recent Franco-German summit.
Gallois told reporters that Airbus will cut 5000 staff and 5000 workers contracted from other firms over the next four years.
There were protests at Airbus factories in France at Meaulte and St Nazaire and the head of the European works council warned of wider walkouts as the announcement loomed.
"It will be a [call to] strike, but perhaps a strike is not enough," European works council chairman Jean-Francois Knepper told France's LCI TV before the meeting Gallois.
Gallois confirmed that the plants at St Nazaire and Varel and Laupheim in Germany would be sold.
Meaulte, as well as Filton in England and Nordenham in Germany, were sites where Airbus will look for investors to take partial stakes.
The restructuring has "ensured a balanced distribution of risks and opportunities," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told journalists in Berlin, though she regretted the job losses.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed a victory for the Filton plant, one of two in Britain, citing coveted carbon fibre composites work for the wing of the A350.
The shake-up comes after a two-year delay in delivering the A380 superjumbo put a €5 billion ($8.7 billion) hole in expected earnings at parent firm EADS.
- REUTERS
