Japan Airlines Corp said Monday it will terminate the employment contracts of up to 250 pilots and cabin attendants after its additional voluntary retirement program failed to meet its job reduction target. The decision by JAL, which is restructuring under court protection, and its bankruptcy administrator, the state-backed Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp of Japan, comes as the airline is aiming to obtain court approval for its restructuring plans by the end of this month.
JAL had been soliciting a total of around 270 voluntary retirement applications from 130 pilots and 140 cabin attendants from Oct 26 to Nov 9, but the number of applications fell short of the target by about 200 after only 20 pilots and 50 cabin attendants applied, the airline said. In addition, the airline also plans to dismiss about 50 pilots and cabin attendants who are currently on leave, it said.
‘‘We are in a very difficult situation with regard to carrying out further steps to implement our restructuring plan,’’ JAL said in a statement. ‘‘We have reached the decision that we have no choice but to dismiss personnel to achieve an appropriate size of workforce.’‘
The airline said it has informed labor unions within the company of the plan and will continue to accept voluntary retirement applications before the pilots and cabin attendants subject to forcible dismissal leave the airline in and after December.
But the decision has drawn fire from some of the labor unions that may go on strike or resort to legal action to rescind it, a move which could adversely affect the airline’s restructuring efforts.
JAL’s court-administered rehabilitation plans include cutting a total of 16,000 jobs from the JAL-led group’s companies by next March. While the 1,500 jobs subject to the previous voluntary retirement program included around 370 pilots and 610 cabin attendants, only 240 pilots and 470 cabin attendants applied.
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