Air France to cut 2,500 jobs next year

France’s flagship carrier Air France has confirmed plans to cut an additional 2,500 jobs next year, on top of the 5,000 already announced.

According to AFP, the measure presented on Wednesday is a part of a major restructuring project, which has already resulted in more than 5,000 workers taking voluntary redundancy.
An unnamed spokesman for Air France said “The proposed additional cuts… will be discussed and quantified with unions this fall. It could be a little more than half of the redundancies identified in 2012.”
Last year, the company said it would cut 5,122 jobs in an attempt to save 2 billion euros by 2015, as it is struggling to compete with low-cost carriers.
Despite the massive cuts, the parent company Air France-KLM group has said it needs to impose more cost-saving measures.
The group posted negative net results at 793 million euros during the first half of this year, which followed a loss in 2012 of 1.2 billion euros (USD 1.6 billion).
The new set of layoffs comes as another setback to President Francois Hollande, who has vowed to curb unemployment from the current level of over 10 percent to a single-digit figure by December this year.