Germany will fight with all the means it can to save local jobs at European plane maker Airbus, Economy Minister Michael Glos said on Monday. The government is worried that German workers will bear the brunt of expected job cuts at EADS's Airbus unit when the company announces a cost-savings programme to its workforce on February 20.
Glos caused some controversy over the weekend when he was quoted as saying Germany might cancel orders placed with EADS if it were to shift Airbus production from the country. "We are fighting with all the means available to us," Glos told reporters in Abu Dhabi where he is accompanying Chancellor Angela Merkel on a tour of the Gulf.
"I wanted to express that we are serious about fighting for jobs with EADS," he added, when asked about his comments on contracts. EADS shares were trading 1.87 percent lower at 25.12 euros by 1325 GMT. Production delays for the new Airbus A380 superjumbo airliner have hit EADS hard and worker unions fear EADS will axe up to 8,000 jobs in Germany where the aircraft maker employs about 22,300 people.
Last week more than 24,000 Airbus workers in Germany staged protests to fight for their jobs and threatened to hold up aircraft deliveries to save the planemaker's seven German factories.
Earlier, a government spokesman said Berlin was doing all it could to protect jobs at Airbus factories and that it was making its views known to the company. But he denied the government was making any threats to cancel orders. "We are making our interests clear but we are not making threats," government spokesman Thomas Steg told a regular news conference.
He said the looming decisions on job cuts and restructuring had to be comprehensible, transparent and fairly distributed. Steg said that although the government was in contact with the company, Merkel and Airbus chief Louis Gallois had not agreed to meet. German weekly Der Spiegel reported at the weekend the two planned to meet before the cost savings programme was announced.
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