Manchester Airports Group has confirmed it will begin a consultation with nearly 900 staff as it looks to reduce its staffing costs in response to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The UK’s largest airport group has suffered a 90% reduction in demand, since March, for travel through the three airports it operates versus the same period last year.
Proposals could mean the loss of 465 roles at Manchester, 376 roles at Stansted and 51 roles at East Midlands, along with adjustments to roles, roster patterns and other employment measures.
The group said: “In recent weeks, the prospects for a strong recovery over the next 12 months have declined as the virus has re-emerged across the UK and Europe. Meanwhile, the absence of dedicated support for the aviation sector, coupled with a lack of progress in introducing testing for UK passengers to date, has continued to undermine consumer confidence in air travel for next year. Overall passenger demand is not expected to recover fully before 2023-24.”
Since the start of the pandemic, MAG has taken steps to reduce its cost base, including asking every employee to take a 10% pay cut for a year and pausing capital investment and non-essential expenditure. The size of its management team has been reduced, and the group says it was “worked closely with its trade unions” to protect “as many jobs as possible”.
MAG also made “extensive use” of the government’s Job Retention Scheme (furlough) since March but says the introduction of its replacement Job Support Scheme from November 1 offers “a much smaller contribution to meeting payroll costs for a six-month period”.
Chief executive Charlie Cornish said: “By now, we would have hoped to see a strong and sustained recovery in demand. Unfortunately, the resurgence of the virus across Europe and the reintroduction of travel restrictions have meant this has not happened.
“With uncertainty about when a vaccine will be widely available, we need to be realistic about when demand is likely to recover.
“The end of the Job Retention Scheme means that we have to consider the number of roles that we can sustain at our airports.
“We will be discussing these issues with our trade unions, and consulting them fully on a range of options for reducing the size and overall cost of our workforce. We want to work with them to make sure we minimise the impact on our people as much as we can.
“I want to thank everyone across MAG for the dedication they have shown through the toughest summer our industry has ever seen. MAG and other UK airports remain fundamentally strong businesses that will play an important role in driving the country’s recovery, but the specific and short term pressures of the pandemic are exceptional and particularly challenging for our sector.
“We are proud of our long-standing role in supporting communities around our airports and underpinning the employment of more than 130,000 people across the UK. We will continue to work to protect as many jobs as possible, maintain dialogue with our trade unions, and continue to make the case to Government for the direct support that UK aviation needs.”
Union Unite agreed that the job cuts reflected the lack of tailored government support for the aviation sector.
It said the affected roles include security officers, engineers, customer service staff, bus drivers and car park attendants and vowed to mitigate job losses in negotiations and press MAG to use the Job Support Scheme in order to save jobs.
Regional co-ordinating officer Lawrence Chapple-Gill said: “This announcement will come as a bitter blow to the hard-working staff.
“They and their families now face a very difficult and unsettling time but Unite will support them every step of the way.
“Unite will do everything it can to reduce job losses and seek to ensure that any eventual redundancies are voluntary and not compulsory in nature.
“These job losses are an inevitable consequence of the government’s failure to provide sector specific support to the aviation industry, the sector which has been most heavily affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Once Covid-19 is under control, confidence will return to the industry and flights will increase. It is a total failure of government to not be assisting the industry and its workforce through this crisis in order to ensure it can quickly recover when the virus abates.
“The chancellor first promised sector support in March. An aviation recovery plan was promised last month. Nothing has materialised and job losses are increasing by the day.”