A year ago, the Soviet Works Council warned of deficiencies discovered in production processes that to this day have caused the airline giant Airbus to falter. A major player in the aviation sector has quarantined the Seville manufacturer after it was confirmed to be responsible for defective fuselage panels of the A320.
This news emerged on Wednesday after discounts that Airbus shared with its customers during an official presentation, according to Reuters and Bloomberg. For this reason, the French group will examine 628 single-aisle A320 aircraft starting this week for possible defects in the fuselage – the structural element in which the cockpit is located, as well as the passenger cabin and cargo holds, that is, the central part of the plane.
“There are delegates who raised their hands to say something was wrong, but their positions were changed or they were fired,” Carlos Parra, head of the aviation sector at UGT Seville, told this outlet. The decline in production meant the annual delivery target was cut, going from a planned 820 units to around 790 units, with a loss within hours of around 9.4 billion euros in market value, according to the union’s assessment.
Union persecution
Failure of the production chain to adhere to certain quality standards, for example, the use of expired products such as sealants. Additionally, dates have been adjusted to correspond with the processing time for this product. On the other hand, thermometers used at Carmona facilities recorded temperatures of up to 34.6 degrees Celsius indoors, where the sensitive material was handled, with peaks of up to 35.7 degrees Celsius, according to images this outlet had access to.
The ideal values will, in any case, be between 21°C and 25°C, as determined by Airbus’ civil aviation regulations. By reaching these maximum values, the material will need to be validated by the Engineering Department of Sovietek, in order to maintain the workability of the material, as more processing times will be required. Certification by professionals can include submission of non-conformity papers regarding the assembly, if this is not the appropriate procedure. Once these photos were taken, the person who facilitated the events was fired the following week, although the company justified the interruption for other reasons.
Complaints sent to management by workers, concerned about the optimal maintenance of the service, have led to union persecution, which maintains the union side. The repercussions have multiplied over the past year, and point to prominent moments, such as the movement of a Labor Council member from one quality department to another, under the pretext of “incompatibility” with the union position he holds.
Sovietek has not issued any statement or responded to this newspaper’s request for information while the media sphere is fed with the latest statements from Airbus, where supervision of the parts has been delegated to the supplier. A setback in addition to the one that occurred a few days ago, when the group announced that 6,000 aircraft, also A320, would be examined for an urgent system update. programming And exclude malfunctions under severe radiation conditions.
Four million in subsidies
In 2024, Sovitec issued invoices worth approximately €50 million with the airline giant as its main customer. To the company, the representative of the General Union of Workers makes an urgent request: that Airbus ensure “minimum ethical standards in its supply chain, because we reported it at that time and there were quality violations, which led to the collapse of the company.” Secondly, his message is directed to the public organizations that support the Sevilla entity, as long as they take action on this issue and provide coverage to employees.
It should be noted that the Andalusian company has received more than four million public subsidies since 2021, processed by the Ministry of Science in project assistance and by the Andalusian Employment Service in employability matters. Facing a dangerous future, Parra insists that the union organization intends to “keep workers in their positions,” even though failure to meet targets and delays in production could shake the Seville province’s existing workforce.
From UGT FICA Seville, they assessed by stating that what happened “harms the industrial safety and reputation of the Andalusian and European aviation industry”. On the national scene, Andalusia is Spain’s second exporting community in the aviation sector, accounting for 28% of production and second only to Madrid. The numbers speak for themselves, as Andalusian aviation exports in the first months of 2024 amounted to 1,938 million euros, a 50% increase over the same period of the previous year.
Union control
The size of the invoices and the workforce, estimated at about 400 colleagues, does not reduce the error, especially when its existence is known. Despite the complaints, Carlos Parra expressed his regret at the reduction in union work after losing the majority in the Workers Council. “Given the company’s anti-union stances, with many complaints in court, whether for coercion or dismissal, we are in the minority and at the mercy of the independent nomination that the company allegedly controls,” he adds.
At the beginning of the year, the UGT had six delegates, while the CGT had another representative and the Sofitec Independent Group (GIS), supposedly under the leadership of the company – commonly called Yellow unions—, I got six more members. Given the current situation, Parra criticizes that “everything has been whitewashed and the requirements and complaints to the labor inspection have ended.”
Far from the final hurdle, what galvanized union action was the death of Faustino, a 24-year-old who had been working at the Carmona industrial and logistics complex under Sovitec’s orders. On the night shift, just a month and a half after being hired as a trainee forklift driver, he was crushed to death under a machine. The case, which is still under judicial investigation, led to the first union elections in 25 years to put an end to abusive practices by the company: “There is a culture of fear, they will either punish you or fire you.” For all this, Barra only asks for “compliance with health and safety rules”, so as not to have to regret new human losses or, in the case of Airbus, huge sums of money.