Lufthansa Airlines announces that it would lay off 22,000 employees

Lufthansa Airlines is one of the many airlines in the world which have been hit hard due to lack of travel demand induces by the coronavirus pandemic. A number of countries imposed travel restrictions and many of them continue to keep the restrictions in place. The German based airlines made an announcement on June 11, 2020 that it is planning to lay off 22,000 full-time employees. Lufthansa is not just planning to pay off employees, but is also planning to reduce its fleet by around 100 aircrafts.

Michael Niggemann, the executive board member human resources and legal affairs and labour director of Deutsche Lufthansa AG talked about how important it was to bring a significant reduction in the personnel costs during the crisis and that they wish to have a good restart from the crisis or the Lufthansa Group would be weakened. Niggemann added that laying off of personnel is also inevitable and is a part of its unilateral measures.

The executive board member also said that they wish to avoid such a scenario which is why they are taking every possible measure to achieve concrete result with collective bargaining partners by June, 22, 2020. Lufthansa has also claimed that the airline is aiming to keep as many jobs as possible in the Lufthansa Group and to achieve this, it is necessary to take some strict measures to reduce personnel costs that will have to be applied during the coronavirus pandemic crisis.

The airline has also assured that it is looking forward to avoid the mandatory redundancies as far as possible with the help of the measures like short-time work and crisis agreement. Travel demand across the globe has been affected and many countries continue to have the travel restrictions in place as a safety measure. Many of the airlines have also grounded much of its fleet as it is becoming tough for them to maintain such a large fleet amidst lack of demand.

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