Boeing has delivered layoff notices to 438 employees in a first wave of planned cuts in coming months ultimately expected to leave about 17,000 workers out of a job.
Local media have indicated that the affected 438 workers will be kept on the payroll through the winter holidays, and let go in January. Health benefits will be provided over the three-month period.
The laid off professionals include scientists, engineers, analysts and planners, technicians and tradesmen.
It’s unclear what proportion of the workers are being let go from Boeing’s civilian airliner and space divisions versus its military-related sector – which produces everything from helicopters and strategic bombers to drones, air and missile defense systems, air-dropped missiles and bombs.
“Most affected US employees will be notified mid-November and leave the company on January 17,” a Boeing spokesperson said in a statement earlier in the week. “We are supporting these teammates with additional resources such as severance pay and career transition services,” the statement added.
Washington State Economic Security Department chief labor economist Anneliese Vance-Sherman expressed concern that the layoffs could have knock-on effects across the state, with much of the company’s manufacturing activities taking place across sprawling industrial facilities in Everett and Renton, outside Seattle.
“We know that there are other aerospace manufacturers that connect with Boeing. We know that there are other machine shops across Washington State that connect with Boeing,” the economist told local media. “When we see workers being laid off or uncertainty, this does tend to ripple through the local economy and shows up with impacts such as reduced demand for dining out, for example,” she added.
Striking machinists accepted a contract promising a 38% pay increase over four years, including productivity bonuses, and a one-time contract ratification bonus, last week. Their push for improved pensions didn’t pan out. It’s unclear whether the demand for more input on product safety was addressed in the new contract.
The two-month strike paralyzed the production of Boeing’s 737 Max, 767 and 777 series of aircraft, becoming the latest blow to the aerospace giant’s bottom line amid inquiries by regulators over production standards, product safety and company culture after an incident in January in which a door panel blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 midflight. In July, Boeing agreed to pay $243.6 million to settle criminal fraud charges in connection to fatal crashes of its 737 Max 8 series airliners in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019 which killed 346 people.
The disintegration in space of Boeing’s INTELSAT-33e satellite in October, and the saga of Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft, which faced the breakdown of five of its 28 maneuvering thrusters, and suffered five separate helium leaks, added to concerns about the company’s reputation. Starliner returned to Earth in September without anyone onboard, with a NASA astronaut and two Roscosmos cosmonauts instead making their way home in a Russian Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft.