EADS to cut 5800 jobs in Europe

European aerospace and defense corporate EADS announced on Monday to cut 5,800 European jobs in a plan to restructure its defense and space business. EADS, the parent company of Airbus, plans to consolidate its defense and space businesses into a new division called "Airbus DS" and the job cuts would affect posts in Germany, France, Spain and Britain, said the company in a statement. "We need to improve our competitiveness in defense and space, and we need to do it now," said Tom Enders, Chief Executive Officer of EADS. "With our traditional markets down, we urgently need to improve access to international customers, to growth markets. For that to work, we need to cut costs, eliminate product and resource overlaps, create synergies in our operations and product portfolio and better focus our Research and Development efforts. That's what the restructuring and integration plan for our defense and space business is all about," he said. According to the statement, the job cuts would be completed by the end of 2016. With the efforts of redeployment, non-renewable of temporary contracts and additional voluntary measures, net redundancies are estimated to be between 1,000 to 1,450. "As the restructuring plan is of paramount importance for the future of our defense and space business, we are committed to mitigating the social impact of the necessary adjustments as much as possible," said Thierry Baril, Chief Human Resources Officer at EADS and Airbus. EADS said the new division would start operating at executive level as of January 1, 2014, and would be headquartered in Ottobrunn, Germany. In the statement on Monday, EADS also announced to rebrand its name into "Airbus Group".