The Canadian group Bombardier announced Friday about 2,500 job cuts in its aviation branch, in the year 2020, due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its activities. “Bombardier Aviation has made the difficult decision to reduce its workforce by approximately 2,500 employees. The majority of these reductions will affect manufacturing activities in Canada and they will be carried out gradually during the year 2020, "the group announced in a press release.
These layoffs represent around 10% of the workforce at Bombardier Aviation, a branch which manufactures business aircraft and has around 22,000 employees among the group's 60,000. To explain this decision, the group underlines "the expected drop in business aircraft deliveries throughout the industry of around 30% over 12 months due to the pandemic". "Bombardier must adjust its activities and its workforce to ensure that it emerges from the current crisis on solid foundations," added the group, whose head office is in Montreal.
$ 200 million loss in the first quarter
"It's a matter of adjusting to the size of the market to be competitive," said Mark Masluch, spokesperson for Bombardier, in an interview with the public channel Radio Canada. In early May, the former Canadian industrial flagship reported a loss of US $ 200 million in the first quarter due to the impact of the coronavirus. Bombardier reached an agreement in February for the sale of its (rail) Transportation branch to the French group Alstom and to the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ), for a price between 5.8 and 6.2 billion euros. euros.
The group has also withdrawn from commercial aviation to focus exclusively on business jets. After the announcement of the sale, the group had indicated the departure of its CEO Alain Bellemare, head of Bombardier since 2015, and replaced since by Eric Martel, former boss of the Quebec public electricity giant Hydro-Québec. Heavily indebted, Bombardier recorded a loss of 1.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2019, compared to a profit of 318 million the previous year.
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