Lufthansa Group’s planned 22,000 job cuts will affect 600 pilots, 2,600 flight attendants and thousands of roles in its maintenance and catering divisions, the company has revealed.
In a breakdown of the cuts, Lufthansa says there will be a total of 5,000 job losses within its airline operations, including 1,500 ground staff positions. A further 1,400 jobs will go at its headquarters and in administration at its other units.
Lufthansa has already announced that it is terminating its Germanwings unit two years earlier than planned and will reconfigure its Eurowings subsidiary. This will see 300 jobs cut at Eurowings and a 30% reduction in administrative staff.
Austrian Airlines has a “personnel surplus” of 1,100 jobs, and Brussels Airlines will cut 1,000 jobs. A further 500 jobs will be axed at Lufthansa Cargo.
The German airline group has also identified a “worldwide surplus” of 4,500 jobs at Lufthansa Technik – 2,500 of which are in Germany – and a further 8,300 positions at its LSG catering division will be affected.
Lufthansa is in talks with its Verdi, Vereinigung Cockpit and UFO unions over the proposed cuts, and says it “urgently” needs to reach an agreement by 22 June.
“According to our current assumptions about the course of business over the next three years, we have no perspective of employing one in seven pilots and one in six flight attendants as well as numerous ground staff at Lufthansa alone,” says Lufthansa labour director Michael Niggemann.
He adds that these numbers “could even increase if we do not find a way to get through the crisis with competitive personnel costs”.
Lufthansa is hoping that “short-term working” and reduced hours could minimise the need for outright dismissals.
“In the biggest crisis in aviation history, we want to secure over 100,000 jobs in the Lufthansa Group in the long term, despite all the challenges,” says Niggemann. “To achieve this, painful restructuring measures are unavoidable, which we want to implement in a socially-responsible manner.”
