The company Boeing plans to reduce its total number of employees by roughly 10% through a “combination of voluntary layoffs, natural turnover, and involuntary layoffs as necessary”, Reuters reported citing an email to employees by the CEO.
"The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting every aspect of our business, including airline customer demand, production continuity and supply chain stability", Boeing President and CEO David Calhoun said. "Our primary focus is the health and safety of our people and communities while we take tough but necessary action to navigate this unprecedented health crisis and adapt for a changed marketplace".
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) said earlier today in a fresh report on the impact of COVID-19 on employment that over 300 million people across the world will lose jobs, and 1.6 billion people will lose their livelihoods due to the quarantine measures imposed worldwide to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
On 27 April, the company disclosed new voluntary layoff offers (VLOs) to employees. Boeing spokesman Bernard Choi said a day later that "several thousand employees taking VLO or retiring is our expectation".
The travel and hospitality industries were some of the first to feel the economic damage from the pandemic.
According to the John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Centre, the number of people infected with the novel coronavirus worldwide has exceeded 3.1 million and more than 216,000 of them have died.