Air Canada to lay off half its workforce as virus bites
17 May, 2020
Air Canada announced Friday that it'll lay off at least half of its staff as a result of collapse of its business through the coronavirus pandemic.
The airline made a decision to slash its workforce after reducing flights by 95 percent because of border closures and lockdown measures, it said in a statement emailed to employees and seen by AFP.
The company, which employs about 38,000 people, says it generally does not expect a go back to normal for a long period.
"Today we took the painful decision to lessen our procedures according to plan, which sadly means a reduction in our workforce by 50 to 60 percent," the e-mail said.
The existing workforce allows the airline to use about 1,500 flights a day, using 258 aircraft.
"In the current economic climate, an operation upon this scale is not viable for future years," the airline said.
"We are doing this to preserve our cash flow, to bring how big is the company consistent with expected traffic levels over the medium and long-term and position ourselves for renewed growth when business resumes."
The Montreal-based company had laid off a lot more than 16,500 employees by the finish of March before announcing in early April that it designed to rehire them because of a wage subsidy program set up by the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
This program was extended Friday before end of August.
Air Canada suspended almost all of its international flights, including to america, after the non permanent closure of the border between your US and Canada so that they can stop the spread of the coronavirus.
The airline continues to serve all of Canada, but at a lower life expectancy number of airports.
The business says it has contacted the unions to implement the layoffs, that will take effect in early June.
Source: japantoday.com
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