Bombardier cuts 280 jobs in Belfast
Bombardier is cutting 280 jobs from its Belfast aerospace plant as the parent company tries to lower costs.
The redundancies come a week after Airbus swooped in to rescue Bombardier’s troubled C Series airliner program, which was under the threat of punitive tariffs being imposed on jets sold in the U.S.
Bombardier has about 4,000 staff in Northern Ireland, where it is the region’s biggest private employer. Wings for the C Series are built in Belfast and about 25 per cent of the company’s staff there are involved in the program, a level that could rise to about 60 per cent over the next few years.
The latest job losses — which will be among support staff rather than those in manufacturing roles — come on top of 7,500 redundancies around the world which the Montrealheadquartered business announced a year ago. Bombardier said it “continues to review our manpower requirements in Belfast.”
Alain Bellemare, chief executive, has been trying to get the company back to financial health after a series of problems that brought it to the brink of bankruptcy two years ago.
Cost overruns on the C Series resulted in Quebec taking a US$1.5 billion stake in the business.
Bombardier also recently lost out when Germany’s Siemens spurned a chance to merge their train construction businesses, instead opting to tie up with France’s Alstom. Last week Airbus took a 50-per-cent stake in the C Series program. The no-cash deal will see Airbus build C Series airliners at its Alabama site, dodging the issue of import tariffs in the U.S., and use its industrial might to back the program.