Germany: social partners at Airbus present working time reduction measure in effort to avoid redundancies

On 4 March, the leadership of Airbus Deutschland and the company’s central works council presented a company agreement – negotiated with the support of the union IG Metall – that, according to the firm’s management, will allow for the 5,100 redundancies that had been planned in Germany to be completely avoided. Following deals reached in the UK (see article n°12344) and in France (see article n°12177), the European airliner manufacturer is on the way to cutting 15,000 jobs without resorting to forced redundancies (the situation in Spain is yet to be resolved). As in the other countries, the plan negotiated in Germany makes use of known measures – a voluntary redundancy plan and the extension of short-time working – but also includes a four-stage working time reduction scheme. The latter measure will commence from 2022. To find out more, Planet Labor spoke to Carsten Bremer, from IG Metall’s regional branch in Germany’ coastal area, who was a negotiator on this agreement.