Bilderberg EADS CEO Tom Enders at work.
Flashback:
– Bilderberg 2011 in St. Moritz: Airbus CEO Tom Enders & Peer Steinbrück (Photo)
– Airbus at `Less Than Zero’ Value Still Loses Altitude
– Thousands of German workers protest against EADS shake-up (Reuters, Nov 28, 2013):
More than 20,000 workers from European aerospace group EADS took to the streets in Germany on Thursday to protest against restructuring plans they fear could cost thousands of jobs.
Protests were held at about 30 sites, from the company’s Airbus factories near Hamburg in the north to its Eurofighter jet assembly plant in Bavaria’s Manching in the south.
“This has been a clear warning that the employees of EADS will not accept decisions made to their disadvantage and over their heads,” said Ruediger Luetjen, head of the company’s European works council and an IG Metall union representative.
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– 1,000s of EADS workers demonstrate in Germany (PressTV, Nov 29, 2013):
Thousands of workers from European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company N.V. (EADS) have demonstrated in Germany against the company’s new restructuring plans that may lead to massive job losses.
The demonstrations took place in 30 EADS locations across the country on Thursday over the company’s plans to join its defense and space subsidiaries and to sell some of its operations next year, Reuters reported.
“This has been a clear warning that the employees of EADS will not accept decisions made to their disadvantage and over their heads,” said Ruediger Luetjen, head of the company’s European works council and an IG Metall union representative.
Although EADS has announced that it will release the details of the shake-up on December 9, labor representatives have asked for sooner briefing in order to relieve workers of their worries after reports that several thousand jobs will be lost.
The company, owned by the French and German governments, says it needs to be competitive in the future and needs to streamline to increase profits.
“This is complete rubbish, what is happening. We are making money, there is work for everyone,” said Peter Stoerecker, one of about 1,000 workers who joined a rally at the company’s Eurofighter jet assembly plant in Bavaria’s Manching in the south.
“This does not make sense. It is simply not right what is happening,” he added.
About 140,000 employees work for EADS around the world, of which about 50,000 are in Germany.
Official data released by Germany’s Labor Office on Thursday indicated that the country’s jobless rate jumped to its highest level since April 2011 on a seasonally-adjusted basis in November.
The number of the unemployed people in Germany increased by 10,000 to 2.985 million in the noted month, the official figures showed.
Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) and the European Union’s statistics office, Eurostat, reported in October that 16.1 percent of the German population or approximately 13 million people run the risk of plunging into relative poverty.
– EADS Chief Warns Jobs Cuts Coming In Defense Unit (Defense News, Nov 25, 2013):
FRANKFURT — A reduction in defense orders will have an impact on jobs in EADS’s defense unit, the head of the European aerospace giant said in an interview published Monday.
Tom Enders told vbw-Unternehmenmagazin, the magazine of the Bavarian economic federation, that “if defense orders are canceled or reduced as has happened in Germany in recent years, an impact on production and employment cannot be avoided.”
Enders’s comments follow a report by the German news agency DPA last week that EADS is considering cutting the workforce by 20 percent, or 8,000 employees. The group will be renamed Airbus Defence and Space next year as it reorganizes.
EADS said no numbers have been decided, but Enders has previously said drastic measures were needed to secure the future of the division.
The restructuring is seen as unavoidable after the failed plan to merge with Britain’s defense firm BAE Systems last year.
That was shelved after objections from government stakeholders, notably Germany, which worried it would cause considerable layoffs.
Enders said the outlook is not rosy for defense manufacturers due to the high value of the euro and the eurozone debt crisis pushing countries to cut back on acquisitions of new equipment.
Enders told the Bavarian magazine that EADS had lost over the past few years orders worth several billion euros just in Germany that the company had thought were certain.
He said EADS cannot absorb that without making changes at the affected sites. He did not go into details.
The German newspaper Suedeutsche Zeitung reported Monday that a defense factory of EADS’s Cassidian unit located north of Munich would be closed with activities shifted to another facility in Bavaria, where EADS employs some 16,000 people.
An EADS spokesman declined to comment on the report, telling AFP that it would not make detailed announcements on its plans before informing its European works council, which meets in Munich on Dec. 9.