Over 370 jobs at risk at London Stansted

Manchest Airport Group, the UK's largest airport group, say 376 roles could be lost at London Stansted.

They've announced they'll begin discussions with unions on proposals to reduce employee costs in response to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

MAG say they've used the furlough scheme extensively during lockdown, and with that coming to an end soon they're having to look at further reducing their workforce.

The group added that there's been a 90% reduction in demand for travel since March, compared with the previous year.

With monthly demand currently still 75% below normal levels.

They say with cases on the rise again the prospect of recovery over the next 12 months is in decline, adding that a lack of progress in introducing testing for UK passengers to date has continued to undermine passenger confidence.

MAG say overall they're not expecting passenger demand to recover fully until 2023-24.

Charlie Cornish, who's the CEO of MAG, said: "By now, we would have hoped to see a strong and sustained recovery in demand. Unfortunately, the resurgence of the virus across Europe and the reintroduction of travel restrictions have meant this has not happened.

"With uncertainty about when a vaccine will be widely available, we need to be realistic about when demand is likely to recover.

"The end of the Job Retention Scheme means that we have to consider the number of roles that we can sustain at our airports.

"We will be discussing these issues with our trade unions, and consulting them fully on a range of options for reducing the size and overall cost of our workforce.

"We want to work with them to make sure we minimise the impact on our people as much as we can.

"I want to thank everyone across MAG for the dedication they have shown thorugh the toughest summer our industry has ever seen. MAG and other UK airports remain fundamentally strong businesses that will play an important role in driving the country's recovery, but the specific and short term pressures of the pandemic are exceptional and particularly challenging for our sector.

"We are proud of our long-standing role in supporting communities around our airports and underpinning the employment of more than 130,000 people across the UK. We will continue to work to protect as many jobs as possible, maintain dialogue with our trade unions, and continue to make the case to Government for the direct support that UK aviation needs."

Unite Union responded to the news that more jobs would be lost at London Stansted claiming that it is a "direct consequence of government failure to provide aviation support".

They say the job losses will impact on directly employed workers at the airport including security officers, customer service staff, and car park attendants.

Unite say they'll begin negotiating with Stansted and will try to mitigate job losses and encourage the company to utilise the Government's new job support scheme to save jobs and attempt to ensure that redundancies are voluntary rather than compulsory.

Unite regional officer, Mark Barter, said: "Unite will do everything it can to reduce job losses at Stansted airport and seek to ensure that any eventual redundancies are voluntary and not compulsory in nature.

“These job losses are an inevitable consequence of the government’s failure to provide sector specific support to the aviation industry, the sector which has been most heavily affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Once Covid-19 is under control, confidence will return to the industry and flights will increase. It is a total failure of government to not be assisting the industry and its workforce through this crisis in order to ensure it can quickly recover when the virus abates.

“The chancellor first promised sector support in March. An aviation recovery plan was promised last month. Nothing has materialised and job losses are increasing by the day.”

We have approached Rishi Sunak's office for comment.