The airline has completed their cooperation process started in September with the goal of reducing up to 1,000 jobs. The job cuts include approximately 600 positions in Finland and the redundancies will be completed by March 2021.
On Tuesday (October 20, 2020), Finnair announced that they have completed their cooperation process with approximately 2,800 employees in Finland which included all employees except cabin and cockpit crew. The process resulted in approximately 700 job cuts, including 600 employees in Finland and an extension of long-term temporary layoffs for thousands of other Finnair employees. Discussions outside of Finland have resulted in approximately 100 redundancies. The airline currently employs approximately 6,500 team members. In Tuesday’s announcement, Finnair’s CEO, Topi Manner, said,
“I’m grateful that together with our employees, we are able to find savings solutions which helped us save approximately 150 jobs at Finnair. Despite that, this is a very sad day at Finnair. The corona pandemic has been completely unfair to our industry and unfortunately many Finnair employees must experience its financial implications personally. The changes are, however, necessary and inevitable. Finnair’s re-build requires us to be competitive when aviation gradually starts to recover. Therefore, in the future, we will have to do many things differently in order to succeed in the competitive market.”
As previously mentioned, the company is continuing temporary layoffs which are impacting most of their employees in Finland. Unfortunately, according to industry estimates, recovery of the aviation business may take several years. In collaboration with many partners, Finnair has created a program for impacted employees called ‘NEXT’ which includes training opportunities, career coaching and re-employment opportunities. Commenting on the program, Finnair’s SVP People & Culture, Johanna Karppi, added,
“It has been great how smoothly and in a customer-oriented way the implementation of the change security program has started, both with different authorities and with selected educational partners. Every player has been ready to develop solutions specifically for our employees, taking into account the employees’ current knowledge and its development. At this stage, I would like to thank all the partners for the expertise and co-operation they have shown in designing the program. In addition to the usual work-to-work placement assistance, we have been able to work together to build training and conversion pathways and measures to support entrepreneurship for those Finnair employees who want to expand their knowledge or consider becoming entrepreneurs.”
Specializing in passenger and cargo traffic between Asia and Europe, Finnair has a competitive advantage due to their geographical location. Finnair is also the only Nordic network with a 4-Star Skytrax rating and carried over 14.7 million passengers in 2019, earning revenues of €3.1 billion. The carrier is also a member of the global oneworld® alliance and its shares are traded on the Nasdaq Helsinki stock exchange.
Source: Finnair