Sarkozy set to meet Airbus unions
Nicolas Sarkozy, the new French President, is to meet union leaders at planemaker Airbus after making the troubled firm's revival a priority.
Mr. Sarkozy will talk to managers, union officials and workers at the firm's Toulouse headquarters on Friday. Airbus, in which the French government is a major shareholder, has been dogged by delays to its flagship A380 project and is planning to cut 10,000 jobs. Unions oppose the move and have held a wave of strikes in recent months. Airbus is controlled by French and German shareholders through its parent business, EADS. At a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday, Mr. Sarkozy stressed that "industrial co-operation" between the two countries was also one of his main goals.
See "Sarkozy set to meet Airbus unions", BBC News, BBC News Online, May 16, 2007