In August 2001, following the 'Holco' takeover of AOM-Air Liberté, workers' representatives, the official receivers and the government drew up a redundancy plan for the airline. Some 1,400 job losses are planned through redundancies and voluntary departures, but the government and trade unions have attempted to find jobs elsewhere for all the redundant staff.
In spring 2001, the Swiss-based airline company, Swissair, announced that it would be pulling out of its loss-making French subsidiaries - Air Littoral, Air Liberté and AOM (FR0105158F). Air Littoral was taken over by its former chief executive in early July, while later in the month the courts approved a bid, known as the 'Holco plan', to take over AOM-Air Liberté (FR0108160F). This takeover was backed by the Canadian bank, CIBC, and led by Jean-Charles Corbet, an Air France pilot and former chair of the National Airline Pilots' Union (Syndicat national des pilotes de lignes, SNPL). The plan, which involves potential employee share-ownership of up to 34%, had received the approval of the AOM-Air Liberté works council.
AOM-Air Liberté works council members and the official receivers took more than 10 days in August 2001 to agree on the criteria for redundancies following the Holco takeover. Initially, the Holco plan involved 1,853 redundancies, voluntary resignations and early retirements. In the end, only 1,405 people in the group will be affected, or just under 1,400 not including those employed in subsidiaries.
In deciding which employees were to be kept on, priority was accorded to the factors of length of service with the company, workload, and seniority in a particular position. In addition to these initial criteria, Holco committed itself to sharing the potential redundancies fairly between the staff of the two former companies (AOM and Air Liberté). It was thus agreed to divide the redundancies on the basis of the relative size of the workforces of the two firms. Lastly, the employees concerned will benefit from the company collective agreement which offers the most favourable redundancy conditions - ie Air Liberté's.
Moreover, 751 AOM-Air Liberté employees volunteered for redundancy. Not all these applicants will, however, be offered this solution: if their leaving jeopardises the new company's operational capacity (this would be the case, for instance, for Airbus A340 pilots) or if their compensatory payments exceed the ceiling paid for by the wage guarantee insurance (Assurance de garantie des salaires, AGS) fund, voluntary redundancy will not be offered.
The Transport Minister, Jean-Claude Gayssot, committed himself to not allowing a single AOM-Air Liberté worker to be 'left in the lurch'. To this end, after meeting the various transport companies in which the state has a holding (whether partial or total), he announced 1,000 job offers for former AOM-Air Liberté staff. These jobs are at organisations including SNCF (railways), RATP (Paris area public transport), ADP (Paris airport authority), Air France and the National Office of Civil Aviation (Direction générale de l'aviation civile- part of the Ministry of Transport).
In the support they have lent to the Holco takeover, their involvement in the definition of redundancy criteria (through elected representatives on works councils), and by putting pressure on the relevant ministry and state-owned companies, the trade unions at AOM-Air Liberté have played a role which has gone way beyond their traditional one of making bargaining demands. They have thus made themselves essential partners for the company's future management , although because of their de facto participation in the firm's management they might have to justify to their members the unpopular decisions currently being made.