Airbus Defence & Space starts consultation on potential job losses
Airbus Defence and Space has begun a consultation process with employee representatives from the group’s European work council over planned redundancies.
It comes as the company achieved a book-to-bill ratio below 1 for the third consecutive year following a stagnation in the space market and several delayed defence contracts.
Airbus plans to restructure the division which will see a potential 2,362 jobs cut by December 2021. This includes 829 in Germany, 357 in the UK, 630 in Spain, 404 in France and 142 in other European operations.
The measures are intended to ‘improve long-term competitiveness and safeguard the division’s future positioning’ according to an Airbus statement.
Following Airbus’ Annual Press Conference in Toulouse on 13 February, further financial measures were said to be under consideration in order to improve the division’s profitability.
Despite these woes, Airbus maintained dominance in the global semi-government and civil helicopter market with 54% of the market share in FY2019. Furthermore, overall consolidated order intakes for FY2019 increased to €81.2bn compared with €55.5bn in FY2018.
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