Boeing layoffs so far total nearly 2,200 workers in Washington state

SEATTLE (AP) — Boeing said in a notice filed with Washington’s Employment Security Department on Monday that it has so far laid off 2,199 workers in the state, among job cuts that will eventually total about 17,000 across the company.

The aerospace giant announced in October that it planned to cut about 10% of its workforce in the coming months as it struggles to recover from financial and regulatory troubles as well as a strike by its machinists that lasted nearly two months.

The planned cuts include workers at Boeing facilities across the country, from Washington to Missouri to Arizona to South Carolina, The Seattle Times reported. They also appeared to impact workers in all three of Boeing’s divisions: commercial airplanes, defense and global services.

Before the layoff notices delivered last week, Boeing had 66,000 workers in Washington.

Among the layoffs so far are notices that went out last week to more than 400 members of Boeing’s professional aerospace labor union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, or SPEEA. The workers will remain on the payroll through mid-January.

Boeing’s unionized machinists began returning to work earlier this month following the strike.

The strike strained Boeing’s finances. But CEO Kelly Ortberg said on an October call with analysts that it did not cause the layoffs, which he described as a result of overstaffing.

Boeing, based in Arlington, Virginia, has been in financial trouble since two crashes of its 737 Max jetliner killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. The company’s fortunes and reputation took a further hit when a panel blew off the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines plane in January.

Production rates slowed to a crawl, and the Federal Aviation Administration capped production of the 737 MAX at 38 planes per month, a threshold Boeing had yet to reach when the machinists’ strike halted assembly lines.