Airbus workers across France halted work on Monday 26 April to highlight their demands for better pay and more staff. They continued to do so for the next three days. Thousands of workers in Toulouse, Nantes and Saint-Nazaire stopped working and blocked the delivery of airplane parts. Production of the A330 and A340 is to be disrupted and rotating strikes will affect production of the A320 and the A380 as well. Management is offering a 1.9% wage increase for this year but the unions want a 3.5% hike. Unions are also calling for new positions to be created after a restructuring plan in 2007 cut 10,000 jobs. Airbus hired 1,700 new people in 2009 and is adding another 1,500 this year.
English: http://www.heralddeparis.com/france-airbus-workers-down-tools-2/85367;
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100429-716747.html?mod=WSJ_World_MIDDLEHeadlinesEurope via
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/show_news.pl?country=France;
French: http://www.toulouseblog.fr/article-9177-greve_chez_airbus_quelle_suite.html
M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS)