Airbus denies wanting to sell five German plants

FRANKFURT – The European aircraft company Airbus denied yesterday a newspaper report which said that it wanted to sell five German factories employing a combined workforce of 6 600.

“That’s pure speculation,” a spokesman for Airbus Germany told AFP, adding that he denied the report. The mass-circulation daily Bild had reported in its yesterday edition that crisis-ridden Airbus was looking to sell five of its German manufacturing sites – four in the northern state of Lower Saxony and one in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.The newspaper quoted company sources as saying that the sites would be spun off as soon as possible to private investors but would continue to supply Airbus at more favourable rates.Workers would thus retain their jobs but probably be paid less, Bild claimed.The company’s biggest German facility is in the northern port of Hamburg, which employs more than 10 000 workers, and in the nearby port of Bremen, where 3 100 people work.Cabling problems that led to the latest delay in production of the Airbus A380 superjumbo have been traced to the Hamburg plant.The programme is now two years behind schedule and Airbus’s parent company EADS has forecast it will suffer operating losses of around 4,8 billion euros as a result.The newspaper Die Welt, meanwhile, said that a broad restructuring plan for Airbus directly threatened up to 1 000 German jobs, through the elimination of temporary posts or reductions in the number of hours worked.No outright job cuts were foreseen before 2012, however.The French co-chairman of EADS, Arnaud Lagardere, told the French economic daily Les Echos that the rescue plan would affect France as well as Germany.Airbus has a total workforce of 57 000.Lagardere stressed in an interview published yesterday that there was no alternative to the plan dubbed Power8, and that it would “include reductions in administrative posts” at Airbus.On Tuesday, German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee met with French counterpart Dominique Perben and said later he was sure Airbus would come up with a “fair solution between France and Germany” to social problems raised by the restructuring programme.Nampa-AFPThe mass-circulation daily Bild had reported in its yesterday edition that crisis-ridden Airbus was looking to sell five of its German manufacturing sites – four in the northern state of Lower Saxony and one in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.The newspaper quoted company sources as saying that the sites would be spun off as soon as possible to private investors but would continue to supply Airbus at more favourable rates.Workers would thus retain their jobs but probably be paid less, Bild claimed.The company’s biggest German facility is in the northern port of Hamburg, which employs more than 10 000 workers, and in the nearby port of Bremen, where 3 100 people work.Cabling problems that led to the latest delay in production of the Airbus A380 superjumbo have been traced to the Hamburg plant.The programme is now two years behind schedule and Airbus’s parent company EADS has forecast it will suffer operating losses of around 4,8 billion euros as a result.The newspaper Die Welt, meanwhile, said that a broad restructuring plan for Airbus directly threatened up to 1 000 German jobs, through the elimination of temporary posts or reductions in the number of hours worked.No outright job cuts were foreseen before 2012, however.The French co-chairman of EADS, Arnaud Lagardere, told the French economic daily Les Echos that the rescue plan would affect France as well as Germany.Airbus has a total workforce of 57 000.Lagardere stressed in an interview published yesterday that there was no alternative to the plan dubbed Power8, and that it would “include reductions in administrative posts” at Airbus.On Tuesday, German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee met with French counterpart Dominique Perben and said later he was sure Airbus would come up with a “fair solution between France and Germany” to social problems raised by the restructuring programme.Nampa-AFP