Air France is in the process of finalizing a plan to cut 8,300 jobs from its domestic workforce, according to Bloomberg News. The French government, which recently approved a bailout package for the company, has warned Air France that the program must not entail ”social suffering” for those affected, according to the news agency.
The cuts will be implemented through severance packages where employees voluntarily leave their jobs, according to Bloomberg News. In this way, Air France hopes to avoid a scenario where politicians and the public blame the company based on the tax-financed emergency loan and direct investments of 7 billion euros that the company received earlier this spring.
The automotive company Renault has implemented similar cuts and has not escaped public criticism.
One condition set by the French state for the Air France package was to reduce domestic capacity by 40 percent by the end of next year and thereby also reduce the company's climate footprint.
The current restructuring program involves 300 pilots, 2,000 cabin crew and 6,000 ground staff, according to the news agency's sources. In total, this corresponds to 17 percent of the total workforce at Air France, which is Europe's second-largest airline.
Air France's Dutch unit, KLM, is in turn about to negotiate an emergency package from the Dutch government worth up to 4 billion euros.
The French and Dutch states are major owners of the Air France-KLM group, roughly equivalent to the Swedish-Danish ownership of SAS.
Source: Nyhetsbyrån Direkt
