European aerospace giant, Airbus and German metal workers’ union, IG Metall, are to meet for the seventh round of negotiations on Monday over the restructuring of civil aircraft production in Germany.
If the talks failed to produce a result, the union planned to call on its members to vote for a strike.
“Jan. 31 is the deadline,” IG Metall said.
At the beginning of December, more than 14,000 workers took part in token strikes; some lasted several days that largely paralysed production in the busy year-end period.
Airbus wanted to combine the assembly of fuselages and structures in a new subsidiary.
The Airbus plants in Stade, parts of the Hamburg site and the Airbus subsidiary Premium Aerotec with three of the four Augsburg plants and the Bremen and Nordenham sites would be affected.
In total, about 13,000 employees were likely to be affected by the plans at Airbus Operations and Premium Aerotec.
In addition, Airbus plans to sell the production of the part at Premium Aerotec in Augsburg, Varel, Friesland and in Romania to an investor.
IG Metall and Airbus have now held six rounds of negotiations on the conditions of the restructuring, but the union remained unsatisfied.
It wanted to prevent the sale of parts production if possible and was calling for location and employment commitments at Airbus structural assembly plants well into the next decade.
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