British Airways is
to shed more than 1,800 jobs by the end of the financial year with more
redundancies to follow in 2002.
The job losses will affect a wide
range of staff including engineers, cabin crew and customer service officers
and forms part of a cost cutting exercise after a business downturn.
The cuts come in addition to the
1,000 job losses at Gatwick last December, which were part of the company’s
strategy to switch long-haul flights to Heathrow.
BA management wants to achieve the
cuts through voluntary redundancies, a recruitment freeze, by not replacing
staff who leave and by offering some full-time staff part-time work.
British Airways has been badly hit
by the global economic slowdown as well as the foot–and– mouth epidemic and today The Independent reports that the firm may even
fall into loss this year and be forced to cut its dividend.
By Ross Wigham
