500 British jobs face Airbus axe

AT least 500 British jobs are to be lost at European planemaker Airbus. While the full scale of the looming job cuts remained unclear, there was mounting alarm that employees in Britain may bear the brunt of the group's economy drive in response to falling orders.

Their Continental counterparts, protected by strong labour laws, look set to get off more lightly. Airbus was unable to confirm reports that chief executive Noël Forgeard had admitted the Toulouse-based company planned job cuts only in Britain.

A spokesman for the UK business said it planned a pay freeze, a 35-hour week and to cancel overtime in a bid to avert massive redundancies.

'If we did nothing we would have 1,800 too many people, so what we want to do is take measures which will mean that we don't have this number of jobs at risk,' he said. 'It will drastically reduce the number of jobs at risk but there will still be some jobs at risk.'