Hard Times At Airbus

It's being widely reported ahead of tomorrow morning's announcement of Power8 job cuts at Airbus that 4,200 French, 4,000 German, 1,500 British and 500 Spanish jobs are to be cut, divided equally between contract workers and direct employees.

The Meaulte and St. Nazaire plants in France may get the chop as well as Nordenham in Germany and Filton in the U.K.

If they're dividing the cuts between the contract hires and the direct workers, then the effective number of job cuts is only one half the quoted number, because contract workers are temporary help anyway. I saw a lot of them get let go at Douglas and nobody gave it a second thought. It's part of the development cycle as you transition from design into production as Airbus is allegedly doing on the A380.

Rather than being the clear the decks, take no prisoners restructuring that is needed here, this is but a dog and pony show to stifle the dissenters, a Potemkin Village of a performance that will, unfortunately, demand that some highly visible sacrifices be made.

It's not enough by half, and it's in the wrong place as usual. The bloodletting should have started in mahogany row-but it never ever does.

Stay tuned.