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BERLIN: Lufthansa will have laid off 29,000 employees by the end of the year and the German airline will cut another 10,000 jobs in its home country next year as it struggles to cope with the coronavirus, a newspaper reported on Sunday (December 6).
The airline and its subsidiaries, Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian and Brussels Airlines, have cut their schedules, fleet and staff, and air travel is not expected to recover to pre-pandemic levels before 2025.
Citing unidentified company sources, the Bild am Sonntag newspaper said Lufthansa would cut 20,000 jobs outside of Germany, while also selling off its LSG catering unit, which employs 7,500 people, reducing total staff. to 109,000.
Next year, another 10,000 jobs will be cut in Germany. It has already burned € 3 billion (US $ 3.64 billion) of the € 9 billion government bailout it obtained earlier in the year, the newspaper said.
Lufthansa has 27,000 full-time equivalent employees, Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr said last month, even as the airline promised unions not to carry out forced layoffs in exchange for cuts in bonuses and other payments.
A deal to cut costs and save jobs at Lufthansa won the support of the majority of Verdi’s union members who work for the German airline as ground crew, according to the results of a Reuters vote on Friday.
A formal announcement is expected Monday.
The agreement with Verdi followed months of intermittent talks, during which the union accused management of seeking to cut jobs even after receiving a ransom to keep its planes flying.
