Air France Industries in Toulouse: military turn in sight
©AFI KLM E&M/Patrick Delapierre
The employees ofAir France Industries Toulouse walked off the job the last week and maintain their strike against the plan to convert their activity: instead of taking care of the Airbus single-aisle of the national company, they carried out the maintenance of military aircraft A330 MRTT and AWACS.
The case dates back to July 2019, when Air France announced that it had chosen theAirbus A220 (ex Canadian CSeries) for the replacement of its fleet of single-aisle A320 family, of which it still operates 12 A318s, 26 A319s, 42 A320s and 19 A321s. With the consequence of the planned shutdown of the maintenance of these devices on the AFI site in Blagnac (the only one in the provinces), which provided for 575 employees in 2004 but more than 280 currently – after in particular a voluntary departure plan which concerned 80 posts last year. Air France is presenting a reconversion project for 2022 in the summer of 2020, 12 million euros of investment being planned for the site which handles the servicing and maintenance of the A330 MRTT and AWACS military wide-body aircraft.
If the Covid-19 pandemic put union reactions on hold, the walkout led on May 12 in Toulouse to the call of the unions CGT, OF and South Air brought the conflict back to center stage. Affirming that 80% of employees participate in the movement, they claim in a press release that the servicing and maintenance of the A220s “will replace the A320 family in order to maintain the center’s activity” and thus sustain jobswhereas for Canadian single-aisle aircraft, its activities are applied only at Roissy.
The reconversion of the site for the A330 MRTT and the AWACS is denounced by the unions on France Blue as ” stammering and hypothetical “: it cannot generate activity for all employees, and ” worse, it would lock us into a mono-activity which could jeopardize all jobs on the site, if the military contracts were not renewed “. France received only three of the dozen air-to-air tankers expected, the AWACS program “ a 45 year old ” and Air France ” promises the maintenance of the A330s of the civil fleet which must be withdrawn from the fleet by 2024/2025 “, adds Rémi Carlier of the CGT in The gallery.
A spokesperson for Air France explained on a daily basis that maintenance operations will be less efficient with the A220s, “with the first deadlines set for 2026”; it was therefore necessary to organize the activity of the site “in order to ensure its sustainability in the short and medium term”. The 280 employees will go work in the Parisian sites “a few weeks”, the time of the works in Blagnac, which will allow them to be trained in the maintenance of large carriers
Remember that the first of 60 A220-300 with 148 seats ordered firm by Air France were delivered last September; the ninth (F-HZUI called Montrouge) joined its base at Paris-CDG airport on Friday.