Lufthansa weighs cutting more jobs as travel slump endures

Lufthansa is working on further belt-tightening measures that could result in the elimination of 20,000 more jobs, according to newspaper NZZ am Sonntag. The steps are currently being hammered out by the management of the German carrier and could be communicated in September, the Swiss newspaper reported on Sunday, citing two people it didn’t identify. The cuts under consideration for September would be on top of measures already publicly announced, NZZ am Sonntag said. A spokesman for Lufthansa, which employed more than 138,000 people as of Dec. 31, denied the report. The newspaper also cited a spokesman as saying there were no new job reduction plans. Lufthansa’s goal is to cut costs equaling 22,000 full-time positions and to trim its fleet by 100 planes to bring down expenses. Of the 22,000 excess positions, about half are in Germany and the other half abroad, where it slashed more than 8,000 jobs already. It also signed an agreement with its cabin crew union that will safeguard jobs of 3,000 flight attendants in exchange for cuts to wages and benefits, and struck a stopgap deal with pilots to avoid firings in the cockpit for now. “The way this crisis is developing is alarming, and so is how Lufthansa’s management is treating its employees at this time,” Daniel Flohr, who heads the UFO cabin crew union, told Bloomberg News. “Luckily, cabin crews at Lufthansa’s main line are protected from layoffs, but whoever does not have such protection unfortunately has major worries.”<br/>