250 lost Airbus jobs will not be redeployed; But agency staff may get work again in 2011.

Byline: By DAVID JONES Business Correspondent

THE boss of Airbus' wing-making plant in north east Wales says it will not be possible to redeploy 250 agency staff whose jobs are being cut onto other production lines at the site.

But Brian Fleet says they will be first in line when the company ramps up employee numbers in two years time for the start of manufacturing work on wings for its new extra wide bodied A350 airliner.

Airbus has started 90 days consultation with Blue Arrow Managed Services - which looks after Broughton's agency staff - and the union Unite after a massive drop in demand for the Hawker business jet as companies around the world cut back on executive business travel. Workers at Broughton make the wings and fuselages for the jet for US firm Hawker Beechcraft.

Mr Fleet said American orders for the business jet had fallen from 115 in September to between 30 and 40 now.

"Any announcement with regard to job losses in today's economic environment will cause concern to everyone," he said.

"If we thought the Hawker programme would bounce back within months we might have been able to resolve the situation, but no-one can say with any certainty how long the downturn will last.

"We will do everything we can to avoid compulsory redundancies but we cannot redeploy the 250 to other production lines because none of them are growing."

Last month the company said it will cut production of its best-selling A320 family of aircraft from 36 a month to 34 from October.

The next new airliner to go into production will be the extra wide bodied A350 XWB long haul, mid-sized jet.

Mr Fleet said the good news was that the A350 programme, which is getting an investment of 400 million euros for a new production building and other facilities at Broughton, would "start to create a significant numbers of manufacturing jobs from 2011".

He said the exact numbers needed were unclear as fresh recruitment needs would depend in part on what was happening with other aircraft programmes at the site. Staff being laid off now would get first option on some of the jobs.

News of the cutback in Hawker production is a setback, but the biggest part of wing production at the site relates to wings for Airbus' own larger, commercial airliners. The company is cushioned by a backlog of more than 3,600 orders - around 2,600 for the A320 family - equivalent to around five years output.

Airbus said it was committed to its apprenticeship scheme at Broughton and will recruit 85 new apprentices later this year. Broughton employs 6,500 workers, between 1,300 and 1,500 of them agency staff.

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