Finnair to cut 200 jobs and operate "with a smaller capacity"
The war in Ukraine and closed Russian airspace have significantly affected the company's business, according to CEO Topi Manner
Finland's flag-carrying airline Finnair announced on Thursday the start of change negotiations with its employees in October to discuss plans to reorganize the company through personnel redundancies and changing job descriptions.
According to a press release, the plan is "linked to Finnair’s new strategy published on September 7 which focuses on restoring Finnair’s profitability."
The change negotiations will start on October 5th and are estimated to take at least 6 weeks. Finnair is currently discussing with all its stakeholders about changes needed to restore Finnair’s profitability. This includes discussions with its employees on changes in employment terms which would reduce unit costs.
The plan targets to build Finnair’s different functions to meet the size of the company and the changes in Finnair’s operating environment. The company intends to be operating with a smaller capacity than before the pandemic.
Up to approximately 200 jobs at Finnair could be reduced globally if the plan is implemented. About 120 of the redundancies would be in Finland where the negotiations concern approximately 770 employees working in executive, manager and expert roles. Finnair has a total of approximately 5300 employees globally.
The negotiations do not concern crew or other operative employees.
Ukraine war
Finnair CEO Topi Manner said: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the closed Russian airspace have impacted our business significantly. Thus, in addition to other actions to restore Finnair’s profitability, we have to discuss measures that are, unfortunately, the most painful ones for our employees”.
A social support program to those who could lose their work, will be discussed in the negotiations. Finnair offered a social support program to help in re-employment in 2020 for those who then lost their job at Finnair due to the situation caused by the pandemic. "The program gained good results," the company says.