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Bombardier lays off 715 employees

Bombardier Inc. will be cutting 715 employees at its facilities in Montreal as the company plans to reduce its regional production rate due to difficult economic conditions.

Last Thursday, the company said that it plans to implement cutbacks in January and that severance costs will be on the order of $10 million.

This will be the latest work for reduction for the company, which has been hit hard by the recession.

For this year, the airplane manufacturer has laid off more than 4,000 people globally.

On a good note, the difficulties of Bombardier’s aerospace division have been somewhat offset by a series of train orders from Europe, China, and other locations, as well.

CRJ, Bombardier’s regional jet, has been a mainstay of the aerospace unit, but the company says that orders for the model have decreased over the past quarters.

“There are not enough projected CRJ aircraft sales to maintain the current production rate,” commented Guy Hachey, Bombardier Aerospace’s president and chief operating officer.
“Although we are in discussions with several airlines, we had to finalize our aircraft delivery schedule for the next fiscal year. We fully recognize the impact the additional work force reduction will have on our affected workers and their families.”

The company says that it will continue to invest in new aircraft programs and it will be recruiting 500 jobs to run all these programs.

The announcement of the layoffs do not come as a surprise as management has warned of these cutbacks for the past months.