Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
The French airline Air France has announced between 7,000 and 10,000 job cuts (according Le Monde, or 8,300 according to Les Echos) to cope with the consequences of the Covid-19 crisis. Air France will not proceed to forced redundancies. The reduction in staff numbers will only be achieved through voluntary departure and natural departures (mainly departure in retirement) .
The reorganisation, which will be presented at a central social and economic committee meeting on 3 July, affects all positions: first the pilots: 100 to 400 are expected to leave the company. Flight attendants and stewards are also affected, with some 2,000 departures expected. But it is the ground staff who would pay the heaviest price with nearly 6,000 job cuts. Half of the jobs to be lost would be in support functions (quality, human resources, sustainable development). The other half of the affected positions are based in French airports (boarding staff, ramp agents). These cuts for ground staff will result from the reorganisation of the short-haul business, which is heavily loss-making.
Consultations will starts in its subsidiaries Hop! and Transavia on reorganisation that could increase the number of job cuts, mainly in the short-haul business because the government has made the payment of state aid to Air France conditional on the abandonment of domestic routes which can be replaced by train journeys of less than four hours.
Last February, the company already announced 1,510 job cuts by 2022 in the framework of a restructuring that has nothing to do with the coronavirus epidemic and is aimed at improving the airline's profitability.
Several important job reductions were recorded since 2010: 4,000 job cuts in 2010; 5,122 in 2012; 1,826 in 2013; 800 in April 2015 and 1,000 in October 2015. However, in 2018, Air France has announced to recruit 1,000 employees; it is expected that Air France will announce the same level of recruitments in 2019. A job reduction has been announced in 2019 with a voluntary departure plan to cut 465 positions. The current proposals are on a much more severe scale.
Eurofound (2020), Air France, Internal restructuring in France, factsheet number 100958, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/100958.