A sign that production of the Airbus A220 is struggling, the European aircraft manufacturer wants to impose compulsory overtime on weekends on factory workers to make up for the production delay, La Presse has confirmed.
At the end of a meeting on this subject, Wednesday, the president of local section 712 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), Christian Bertrand, estimated that the employer was doing nothing to rebuild bridges with workers.
“We are coming out of a difficult negotiation,” he said. People voted under threat of a lockout. The dust is slowly settling and some groups may be forced to do mandatory overtime. We blow on the embers. »
Airbus and its 1,300 factory workers have just turned the page on tumultuous collective negotiations. They ended on May 1 with a vote in favor of a new collective agreement. Twice, the union members rejected the offer on the table. The talks were marked by pressure tactics that slowed production – an element which added to supply difficulties.
By email, Airbus did not want to comment on “this type of internal matter” as well as on its “production planning”. It was not possible to get an idea of the number of workers who might be affected.
In the manufacturing sector, this rarely happens, according to Mr. Bertrand. On Wednesday, Airbus was unable to tell her how long it would like to have more factory workers in Mirabel during the weekends.
Another meeting is planned for Friday on this subject. Mr. Bertrand says Airbus could have reached out to the union and relied on the “volunteering” of employees.
Despite good harvests in terms of orders, the A220 is still in deficit. To bring the program out of the red, Airbus says it will need to produce 14 aircraft monthly in Mirabel and Mobile, Alabama, in 2026.
In other words, the current production rate must double within two years.
The European aircraft manufacturer still has a lot of work to do. From January to May, 21 examples of the A220 were delivered to customers. This is only two more planes than at the same time last year.
In 2023, Airbus was able to make 68 deliveries of the aircraft by stepping on the accelerator in the second half of the year. The multinational will have to do the same this year to avoid falling behind on its objectives.
“Our operational environment remains complex and deliveries are not linear,” says the European manufacturer, stressing that the “end of the year would be busy.”
Any delay in the profitability schedule risks having consequences for Quebec taxpayers, who hold 25% of this program developed by Bombardier after having injected 1.7 billion since 2015. By agreeing to remit 380 million in 2022, Quebec was able to postpone until 2030 the moment when Airbus will be able to buy back its stake in the A220.
The longer profits wait, the more money the Quebec state will leave on the table.