Stunned Airbus workers walk out over job cuts

VAREL, Germany, Feb 28 (Reuters) German Airbus workers expressed a mixture of disbelief and fear for the future today, after the Franco-German planemaker said it would slash thousands of jobs at three German plants to cut costs.

Airbus said it would shut two plants in Germany and seek a partner for another. Workers at the affected plants retaliated by walking out in protest over job cuts they said will hit local communities hard.

''I couldn't believe the news. I just couldn't believe it,'' Joachim Gramberg said as he walked off his shift at the Varel Airbus plant -- one of three in Europe set to be closed down.

''We used to build 200 planes a year when we were doing great and now we are even making 438 a year and it's still the end.'' Around 3,700 Airbus workers at plants in Germany stand to lose their jobs as part of the restructuring measures, with Varel and Laupheim, another factory in the southwest of the country, set to be shut.

A third plant, in St Nazaire, France, will also close while Airbus will seek partners for three more factories -- one in France, one in Britain and another in Nordenham, Germany, which is destined to remain an Airbus supplier.

''Before Friday, nothing is going to happen here,'' said Michael Eilers, head of the workers' council at Airbus in Nordenham, announcing a spontaneous walk-out at the factory.

Workers also downed tools at Varel and Laupheim.

The impact of the job cuts -- fewer than the 10,000 some feared -- should be absorbed by an improving labour market in Germany, where unemployment fell to a five-year low this month.

But local regions already depressed by the economy's shift away heavy engineering and industry, could suffer.

''A lot of people have built homes here and are uncertain about what is going to happen next,'' Airbus worker Lothar Bredemaier told Reuters Television in Varel.

Monika Boettcher, the 53-year-old owner of a snack booth outside one of the factories, said those who had been drawn to work there years ago now faced a difficult future.

''Families are going to be made to suffer just because the individual doesn't count for anything any more,'' she said.

Reuters DH RN0103