Lufthansa on Thursday said that it plans to lay off a total of 22,000 full-time employees. Further, due to the impact of the pandemic and the financial impact, the airline will also reduce its fleet by around 100 aircraft.
"Without a significant reduction in personnel costs during the crisis, we will miss the opportunity of a better restart from the crisis and risk that the Lufthansa Group will emerge considerably weakened after it. In addition, personnel overhang is likely to become even larger, so that a reduction of personnel overhang by implementing unilateral measures would be inevitable," said Michael Niggemann, Executive Board Member Human Resources & Legal Affairs and Labour Director of Deutsche Lufthansa AG.
"We want to avoid this scenario. That is why we are doing everything we can to achieve concrete results with our collective bargaining partners by June 22, 2020," Niggemann added.
According to the company, the goal is to pave the way for keeping as many jobs as possible in the Lufthansa Group. In order to achieve this, concrete measures to reduce personnel costs are required that will apply for the period of the corona crisis, the company said.
As per the airline, it aims to avoid compulsory redundancies as far as possible by means of short-time work and crisis agreements.
Earlier this month, Lufthansa's Supervisory Board said that it had voted to accept the government's 9 billion euro ($10 billion) stabilisation package.
The package of loans and various measures was offered by Germany's Economic Stabiliation Fund to help the airline weather the impact due to the coronavirus pandemic, reported Xinhua news agency.
According to a statement issued earlier, Lufthansa said it will be obliged to transfer to one competitor each at the Frankfurt and Munich airports up to 24 take-off and landing rights for the stationing of up to four aircraft.
The option is only available to new competitors for one and a half years, and will be extended to existing competitors if no new competitor makes use of it, the airline said.
The package still needs the approval of the competition authorities and the shareholders after it was okayed by both the Management Board and the Supervisory Board of the company.
A general meeting with shareholders to discuss the package is scheduled for June 25.