KLM cuts five thousand jobs to survive

KLM is cutting around 5,000 jobs, almost 15 percent of its workforce, in a move the airline says is necessary for it to survive. Chief executive Marjan Rintel announced the decision in a press release on Thursday, citing high fuel prices and global unrest as the main pressures on the company.

An airline's two dominant cost lines are fuel and people. The fuel price is set on a world market no chief executive controls; the payroll is set in-house. When the first line climbs, the second is what remains to cut — and high fuel prices and global unrest are, between them, the whole of the explanation the airline offered.

KLM expects that compulsory layoffs will not be needed. The reductions are to come through voluntary departure schemes and by leaving posts unfilled as staff leave. Two thousand of the affected jobs will move elsewhere within the Air France-KLM group rather than disappear outright; the rest are simply gone.

The unions FNV and CNV responded with concern, saying workers are footing the bill for a major corporation. The company's version is that nobody will be forced out the door.

KLM was founded in 1919 and is one of the oldest names in aviation. It was effectively taken over by Air France in 2004, though the Dutch brand kept its own name and its own management. An airline that has flown under one name for over a century now describes a payroll reduction as the condition for keeping it.

KLM says nobody will be compelled to leave. The five thousand jobs go all the same — one voluntary departure at a time.