Airbus Drops Four-Day Office Mandate After Strikes
Airbus Drops Four-Day Office Mandate After Strikes
The News
Airbus has backed off its plan to force white-collar staff into the office four days a week after months of union protests and strikes, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Reuters.
Managers have been told employees can keep existing arrangements allowing an average of two work-from-home days a week — effectively suspending the plan to cut remote working to a single day from September.
The retreat is a blow to chief executive Guillaume Faury, who had made getting staff back on-site a personal campaign.
Timeline
Faury tells employees in a memo, first reported by Bloomberg, that home working had been a lifeline during the Covid-19 pandemic when the priority was minimising contact, but that the opposite is now true as Airbus needs skills shared in person. "I count on all of you to support this," he wrote.
Spanish workers begin on-off industrial action. Unions say about 40% of Airbus's 14,000 Spanish staff have joined stoppages over teleworking, transport, paid leave and salary. Sporadic protests follow in France and Britain over the plan to require four days on-site by September.
Reuters reports Airbus has abandoned the plan; managers are advised staff can retain the two-day remote average.
Reactions
An Airbus spokesman said the company's goal has not changed: "Our objective remains the same: we aim for increased on-site presence to ensure better collective efficiency, knowledge transfer and faster decision-making."
"However, effective change requires listening to our people," the spokesman added. "Based on employee feedback, we have decided to implement this transition more gradually."
Strikes at Airbus are rare, and insiders told Reuters the intensity of the Spanish unrest rattled company leadership and prompted questions from the top about how it was handled locally. Human resources officials have pleaded with staff to "play together."
Three Spanish unions were not available for comment, The Independent reported.
What's Next
Three Spanish unions have called a three-hour stoppage on Monday to vote on a longer walkout — so the dispute over pay, transport and leave is not finished even with the remote-work climbdown.
Airbus says it still wants more on-site presence, just on a slower timetable, leaving the door open to another push later.
More
Production has not been hit so far; the disruption has been confined to white-collar ancillary functions, according to Reuters.
The fight lands as the aerospace industry scrambles for people. Tens of thousands have left the sector since Covid-19, and French unions say between a quarter and a third of Airbus's staff joined the company in the past three years — the reason Faury gave for wanting new hires learning in person.
Airbus is not the only multinational meeting resistance to tighter office rules. Recent Deloitte surveys, cited in reporting on the dispute, show younger workers putting a higher priority on work-life balance than the traditional corporate ladder, and delegates at last month's Farnborough Airshow said flexible working helps aerospace compete with higher-paid sectors such as AI.
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