Airbus Cuts Down On Its Labor Force Due To Weak Market

Airbus Group announced that the company was having the intention of decreasing 7% of its manpower due to poor sales. Specifically, there will be 2362 positions cut because of an underlying cause, which is said to be the "lower performance in space".  

Airbus Defence and Space is major in producing satellites and rocket hardware, together with drones and military aircraft. However, the CEO of the company, Guillaume Faury pointed out that the main causes that led to the drop in the division’s income before interest and taxes were the poor performance in space and attempts to promote sales.  

Additionally, the CEO claimed contracts that were postponed on the defence side also caused the company’s cutback in its workforce. 

Space consists of 26% of Airbus Defence and Space revenue, which reached 10.9 billion euros in 2019, and down 1.4% year by year. Adjusted income before interest and taxes reached 565  million euros, which is reduced from 935 million euros in 2018. 

As reported by a company's spokesperson, this division makes up 35000 of Airbus Group’s 135000 employees. However, he refused to give the exact information about the number of redundant positions. 

In the past 12 months, Airbus Defence and Space is the third satellite producer to publicize its job dismissal. In September, Thales Alenia Space announced it was reducing 6% of its manpower, then in the next year February, Maxar also have a similar announcement, which said it would cut around 3% of its workforce. 

Satellite manufacturers have had a depreciation in geostationary satellite orders that close to the historical buying rates in the previous year. At that time, 15 commercially-competed geostationary communications spacecraft were ordered, which was more than the total number of the two previous years’ sale.  

Airbus Group announced that its consultations would be launched on February 19 in collaboration with the European Works Council. The company recommends the highest cutback in German workers, which is 829 because this country prohibited weapons from being exported to Saudi Arabia. Spain is the second one with 630 proposed job dismissal, next is 404 positions in France, 357 in the United Kingdom and 142 in other countries.