Unions at Airbus Deutschland are preparing to challenge the manufacturer’s Power8 restructuring plan, following spontaneous walkouts at three German sites yesterday.
Yesterday Airbus chief executive Louis Gallois revealed EADS’s long-awaited Power8 cost-saving plan, which includes 3,700 German job cuts and an uncertain future for three German sites. He also detailed plans to immediately set up a third A320 final assembly line in Germany.
German union IG Metall, which claims to represent all of Airbus’s German workers, has responded angrily to the plans saying: “The fight for Airbus has only just begun.”
The union has vowed to fight site sales and job reductions and has called staff council meetings at all of the country’s Airbus site today to discuss how best to proceed. It claims that the plans are a “wrong step” with “little light and many shadows”.
IG Metall district representative Jutta Blankau says: “Airbus should not be completely reorganised. The positive decisions on the A320 family should not cover up the prospect of uncertainty for thousands of employees.”
She adds that spontaneous walkouts staged at Varel, Nordenham and Laupheim are unsurprising and says that these will increase in frequency if the company does not become more conciliatory.
Airbus Germany works council chairman Rudiger Lutjen says: “We will not accept the EADS board plan as it is. We will fight for every job. Furthermore we will definitely seek the retention of all sites within Airbus Deutschland.
“Moreover, we will fight in solidarity with all of Airbus’s employee representatives on a European level for our common prospects in the promising future of the aviation and aerospace industries.”
Source: FlightGlobal.com
