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Airbus workers staged fresh wildcat strikes on Wednesday, stepping up protests over a reduced annual bonus payment coming on top of job cuts and financial losses at the European planemaker.

Factories at Nantes and Saint-Nazaire in western France saw production disrupted after similar action at Toulouse last week.

Workers are upset about the cancellation of an annual profit-sharing bonus after Airbus plunged into loss last year due to the weak dollar and problems over production delays on the A380 superjumbo.

Unions say they are being offered a maximum of 5 euros each under a separate mandatory bonus plan for 2006, which they have contrasted with an 8.5 million euro pay-off for a former Airbus chief and calls for a 2006 dividend to EADS shareholders.

Both the recent announcement of 10,000 Airbus job cuts and the prospect of a dividend are sensitive political topics in France, where both remaining candidates in the country's presidential election oppose a payout to investors this year.

Friday's annual general meeting in Amsterdam will be held on the last day of campaigning for the May 6 French run-off between conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Segolene Royal.

Sources close to the matter said last month that the French government, which owns 15 percent of EADS, had blocked a proposal by French and German industrial shareholders for a dividend and a capital increase to fund future investments.

Politicians fear any decision to reward investors would rekindle uproar in France over job cuts that dominated the first stage of the French election campaign in February.

Keeping a tight lid on the dividend discussions, EADS has scheduled its decisive board meeting for Friday morning in Amsterdam, immediately before the shareholder meeting.

Airbus plans to shed up to 10,000 jobs and fully or partially sell six European factories to save money.

French unions said the labor climate in the company's factories was becoming difficult for them to manage.

«This type of sporadic action is likely to happen again but it's not because of the unions,» Force Ouvriere union official Julien Talvant said. «The situation on the ground is becoming hard to control and any announcement from the management can end up being the straw that breaks the camel's back,» he added.

Airbus plans to cut 964 jobs at its Toulouse headquarters plus 2,305 jobs at its Toulouse assembly plants. At Nantes, 295 jobs will go, at Saint-Nazaire 369 and at Meaulte in northern France 192 jobs will disappear, unions said, citing figures given to them in a management briefing.

Airbus is splitting the job cuts between its own staff and suppliers and says it will avoid forced redundancies unless its financial situation gets worse.

Delivery figures due to be released next week may give some indication of whether Airbus production has been affected by the strikes. Until now, deliveries have been broadly unaffected.

(Reuters)