Air France should soon announce the elimination, on a voluntary basis, of several thousand jobs, several union sources told AFP on Wednesday. This plan is intended to deal with the impact of the coronavirus crisis on its activity.
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In February, before the containment decided in France in the face of the coronavirus epidemic, the management had presented a provisional management of employment and skills (GPEC) which provided for the abolition - via non-replaced departures - of 1,510 positions here at the end of 2022, almost exclusively among ground staff.
15 to 20% of the threatened workforce
The health crisis and the sudden cessation of its activity reshuffled the cards, leading the airline group to review this GPEC. An updated version must be presented to union organizations in late June or early July and provide for thousands of layoffs in the near future, according to several concordant sources. For ground staff, the job cuts must go through a voluntary departure plan, said several of them, confirming information from the newspaper Les Echos Wednesday.
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The pilots and the Cabin Crew Members (flight attendants and stewards) each negotiate a collective agreement rupture (RCC), a recent device that would be used for the first time in the group. It has the advantage for the employer of being able to re-hire soon after in the event of resumption of air transport, unlike the voluntary departure plan. According to Les Echos , "the Air France reconstruction plan (...) should include 8,000 to 10,000 layoffs, or 15% to 20% of the group workforce".
Numbers "to take with tweezers"
Many unknowns remain but some figures, still under discussion, are starting to come out. "For the moment, nothing is confirmed," warns Guillaume Schmid, vice-president of SNPL Air France-Transavia, majority among the pilots. "Air France pilots' side, we are discussing a conventional collective break system" and 400 jobs eliminated, a figure "to be taken with tweezers" because the company "must maintain its rebound capacity", he said. he declares. At the end of 2019, the Air France group had 55,292 employees in CDD and CDI.