Air France wants to cut more than 7,500 jobs by the end of 2022, according to union sources - France 24

Paris (AFP)

The Air France group plans to cut more than 7,500 jobs by the end of 2022, including 6,560 in the tricolor company and more than 1,000 in the regional company Hop !, AFP learned Tuesday from union sources.

"The needs fell sharply over the entire period in connection with the drop in activity and the need to accelerate the transformation of the company," explains management in a document consulted by AFP upstream of '' a central social and economic committee (CSEC) scheduled for Friday at Air France.

The job cuts, expressed in CDI FTE (full-time equivalents), will go through natural departures not replaced (about 3,500 out of 41,000 at Air France) and essentially voluntary departures, even if, from the same sources, departures constraints are not excluded for the staff of the short-haul network.

Hop !, which currently has some 2,400 FTEs from union sources, is particularly affected.

According to several sources, the Hop! in Morlaix and Lille are threatened with closure, as is a base of Air France flight personnel in Toulouse.

At Air France, departures must go through collective break-ups for cabin crew, while a voluntary departure plan (PDV) is preferred for ground staff. Management wishes to open negotiations with ground staff unions in early July for the first departures in early 2021.

Contacted by AFP, the management of Air France said they wanted to reserve "the scoop of the presentation of its strategic directions and their impact in terms of employment to social partners and employee representative bodies, which it will bring together on Friday 3 July during a CSEC ".

"The lasting decline in activity and the economic context linked to the Covid-19 crisis require accelerating the transformation of Air France", she said, saying that she was studying "all the tools for adjusting downsizing its workforce, prioritizing volunteering and mobility. "

The shock linked to the Covid-19 epidemic was unprecedented for the French company as for its international rivals, who have chained in recent weeks the announcements of cuts in their workforce: 22,000 at the German group Lufthansa, 12,000 at British Airways or 10,000 for the American Delta Air Lines.

The French State, shareholder of Air France-KLM, provided financial support of 7 billion euros to the Franco-Dutch group, including 4 billion guaranteed bank loans and 3 billion direct loan, asking it to improve its profitability and its environmental impact.

In response, the director general of Air France-KLM, Benjamin Smith, announced in late May the reduction of the French network (loss-making) by 40% by the end of 2021.

© 2020 AFP