Workers threaten Airbus slowdown as EADS tries to reconcile the irreconcilable

The built-in contradictions of statist European industrial policy and the free market are cracking through the corporate structure of EADS, whose Airbus division threatens to tear itself apart. Tens of thousands of Airbus workers in Germany and France plan a work slowdown to protest the company's "Power 8" emergency cost-cutting measures.

Airbus is finding it cannot be both a successful private enterprise and a eurosocialist jobs program. Its illogical management structure, dysfunctional pan-nationalist industrial divisions and failed management decisions have caused the leaders of the once high-flying giant to pull the ejector seat. Now EADS must slash thousands of Airbus jobs.

And the workers, with their red banners, are revolting. “Today’s demonstrations in Germany mark only the beginning of a possible Europe-wide wave of protest should the EADS management plan mass layoffs and site closures,” a German union leader tells Reuters. French unions pledged support and have appealed for more government subsidies of Airbus.

Does the United States Department of Defense want to entrust its next generation cargo and tanker aircraft to Airbus?