Sun, Sep 28, 2008
Open Dialog Keeps Production Rolling, Planemaker Says
Airbus and Boeing are facing many of
the same concerns, from slumping economies and increasing fuel
prices, to outsourcing strategies and labor union woes. Yet Airbus
is taking a big step towards maintaining its leadership in airliner
production numbers, by keeping its production lines moving ahead
while Boeing's now sit idle.
A key difference seems to be in dealing with their labor
problems, benefiting from a better level of communication. Regular
forums for discussion such as work councils have provided greater
and more frequent communication between labor unions and
management... a contrast to the three-year cycle of contract
negotiations at Boeing, reports the International Herald
Tribune.
That relationship with management has allowed Airbus to avoid
large-scale labor issues in 2008, and have helped keep deliveries
of the planemaker's troubled flagship A380 on schedule.
"We have pretty good working relations with the unions, which
are not nearly as adversarial as in Seattle," Airbus Chief
Operating Officer John Leahy said. "We have a partnership here, and
whether you are on the assembly line or an engineer you can
understand the euro-dollar problem, and see the foreign exchange
rate going in the wrong direction."
Still, Airbus is not without its own problems. The planemaker's
assembly lines were shut down three times in 2007 as 33,000 workers
demonstrated against planned job cuts, and smaller hiccups in
production have occurred sporadically.
More recently, plants have been hit with random strikes as
workers protest the company's planned
Power8 restructuring plan, that calls for the
elimination of some 10,000 jobs. But strikes tend to be of shorter
duration at Airbus than at Boeing, analysts observed.
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