Airbus rescue plan under fire
Airbus unions in France on Friday ordered a one-day strike for next week to protest planned job cuts and plant disposals at the European aircraft maker.
By Agencies |
PARIS: Airbus unions in France on Friday ordered a one-day strike for next week to protest planned job cuts and plant disposals at the European aircraft maker.
Shares of the parent company of Airbus, meanwhile, sank as much as 5.2% in the wake of the disclosure that work has been halted on the slow-selling freighter version of the A380 model. The five main French Airbus unions called on workers at Airbus’ sites across the country to stop work Tuesday in protest against 10,000 planned job cuts and the sale or closure of six plants announced by Airbus this week.
German Airbus workers may join the strike, union officials said, along with staff at other plants belonging to defence group and Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence and Space in both countries. Airbus announceed on Thursday that work on the troubled A380 superjumbo freighter had been halted indefinitely.
The moves follows FedEx’s November decision to cancel its order for 10 A380 freighters. United Parcel Service, the last customer for the Airbus SAS A380 freighter, also said on Friday that it would cancel its $2.8 billion order for 10 of the superjumbo jets later this year.
No date had yet been fixed for work on the freighter programme to re-sume, an Airbus spokeswoman said. Resources are being focused on the A380 passenger jet, whose two-year delay has wiped e5 billion ($6.6 billion) off EADS profit forecasts for 2006-2010. A tug of war between French and German shareholders has paralysed EADS and Airbus and delayed the announcement of the Power8 restructur-ing programme — finally unveiled this week by Airbus CEO Louis Gallois.
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Core shareholders DaimlerChrysler of Germany and France’s Lagardere are both trimming their EADS stakes. DaimlerChrysler last month sold a 7.5% stake to a group of banks including public institu-tions controlled by German regional authorities. That move has prompted a French regions to seek to buy between 5% and 10% of the defence group to balance what they see as excessive German po-litical influence, the president of Midi-Pyrenees in southern France said.“We’re talking about a significant investment, not a symbolic one,” Midi-Pyrenees chief Martin Malvy said in an interview published Fri-day in Le Figaro, a leading French daily. Picardie and Aquitaine, two other French regions where Airbus has factories, have already given their support, Malvy said.
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