Business Channel 2007-03-05&07

Airbus will cut 10,000 jobs, half from its own 56,000-member workforce¹ and half from subcontractors. 1,600 of the jobs will go here in the UK, but the bulk of the cuts happen in Germany and France.

Couldn't believe the news, I couldn't believe the news. We used to build 200 planes a year when we were doing great. Now we are building 438 and it's the end. It's too late.

Airbus chief executive² Louis Gallois said the company faces three major weaknesses: costs too high, a lack of strong partners to share costs and risks and the unique structure of Airbus spread across four European countries.

It means that we have no actual industrial integration³. It means overlaps⁴. It means a, a lack of synergies.

The restructuring was months in the making. Airbus has lost billions of dollars with its superjumbo A380 plane. Three delays in delivery times led to some airlines canceling orders. Some may get money back because of the delays. Airplane orders are done in dollars. US-based Boeing benefits from the weak dollar while Airbus has suffered from a strong euro. Because Airbus stretches across Europe, there were concerns about where the job cuts would happen.

It will be fairly shared between the different countries.


Vocabulary


synergy n. If there is synergy between two or more organizations or groups, they are more successful when they work together than when they work separately; used mainly by business people.
Of course, there's quite obviously a lot of synergy between the two companies.

1 workforce   

n.劳动大军，劳动力

参考例句：

• A large part of the workforce is employed in agriculture.劳动人口中一大部分受雇于农业。
• A quarter of the local workforce is unemployed.本地劳动力中有四分之一失业。

2 executive   

adj.执行的，行政的；n.执行者，行政官，经理

参考例句：

• A good executive usually gets on well with people.一个好的高级管理人员通常与人们相处得很好。
• He is a man of great executive ability.他是个具有极高管理能力的人。

3 integration   

n.一体化，联合，结合

参考例句：

• We are working to bring about closer political integration in the EU.我们正在努力实现欧盟內部更加紧密的政治一体化。
• This was the greatest event in the annals of European integration.这是欧洲统一史上最重大的事件。

4 overlaps   

v.部分重叠( overlap的第三人称单数 )；（物体）部份重叠；交叠；（时间上）部份重叠

参考例句：

• The style in these two books largely overlaps. 这两本书的文体有许多处是一致的。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The new office overlaps the functions of the one already in existence. 新机构的职能与那个现存机构的职能部分重叠。 来自辞典例句