German Labor Union ‘Won’t Accept’ Airbus Job Cuts

By BLOOMBERG NEWS

Germany’s IG Metall labor union, the biggest manufacturing workers’ lobby in Europe, said it refused to accept cost-cutting measures at Airbus SAS that may lead to 10,000 job losses, though ruled out calling strike action.

Toulouse, France-based Airbus, the world’s biggest maker of commercial planes, will slash 2.1 billion euros ($2.8 billion) from annual costs by 2010, Chief Executive Officer Louis Gallois said yesterday. To reach that goal, Airbus in Germany is looking to sell plants in Laupheim and Varel and find an industrial partner for a site in Nordenham. Some 3,700 jobs will go in Germany, Gallois said.

“The fight for Airbus has just begun,” Jutta Blankau, IG Metall district head in Germany’s coastal region, said at a press conference in Hamburg today. “We don’t accept the proposals made by the company.”

Blankau’s comments are further evidence that labor unions intend to rally public support for restructuring plans to be scaled back. IG Metall agreed with fellow EU union leaders to stage a so-called European action day in two weeks’ time, Blankau said, without giving any details. Still, she ruled out strike action over job losses as illegal.

“We will not call for strikes because German labor law simply doesn’t allow for that,” she said in an interview immediately before the press conference.

No Buyers, No Talks

“There are no potential buyers” for the plants “and there are also no talks” to that end, she said. “We are in the midst of huge uncertainty which could last for months.”

Workers at Varel, Laupheim and Nordenham refused to go back to work today after announcing yesterday that production would be halted through tomorrow, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported today, citing an Airbus works council member it didn’t name.

Blankau said such “wildcat” action was merely a means for workers to express their protest without resorting strikes and infringing German labor law.

Airbus, struggling to end a financial crisis sparked by delays in the A380 superjumbo jet, will take a 680 million-euro charge in the first quarter to eliminate 18 percent of the workforce.

Airbus currently has 56,400 employees spread over 17 sites in France, Germany the U.K. and Spain. Some 20,800 staff are employed in Germany. In the northern city Varel, where unemployment exceeds 10 percent, Airbus is the biggest employer.

“The size of job reductions announced yesterday, 3,700 in Germany, is something we simply cannot accept,” IG Metall official Ruediger Luetjen told the same press conference. “It’s obvious that management mistakes contributed to this situation,” he said, adding that the cost-cutting program known as Power8 will not be implemented in its current form.

Airbus “is prepared to talk and I’m sure that we’ll have the better arguments as to why factories shouldn’t be sold,” Blankau said earlier today on Deutschlandfunk national radio.