Boeing is laying off roughly 3,500 workers, including 2,249 employees in the Pacific Northwest, the company announced in mid-November. The layoffs include 50 employees at Boeing’s Gresham facility, 1,160 in Everett, 339 in Renton, 235 in Seattle, 148 in Tukwila, and 136 in Auburn. At 20 other locations in Washington, nearly 300 other employees are on the layoff list. The Washington layoffs total 2,199 workers. The majority of this batch of layoffs will take effect Jan. 17, but a handful of workers will be out of work as soon as Dec. 20.
The layoffs include engineers, managers, analysts, administrative support staff, recruiters, and others. The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) said 438 members have received layoff notices, including 425 in Washington and four in Oregon. SPEEA represents roughly 17,000 Boeing workers in four states.
This batch of 3,500 layoffs is likely the first wave, with more to come. Boeing announced in October that it would lay off 17,000 employees, or 10% of its global workforce.
Besides the 2,199 in Washington and 50 in Oregon, Boeing is also laying off 692 in Missouri, 184 in Arizona, 63 in Colorado, 220 in South Carolina, and 101 in Pennsylvania.
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told investors that the cuts were due to overstaffing. The company reported more than $6 billion in losses in the third quarter and it hasn’t had a profitable year since 2018, as safety issues and production delays have persisted.
When company leaders announced the layoff plans in October, they said machinists in Washington and Oregon wouldn’t be cut — at least initially, the Seattle Times reported. At the time, 33,000 Boeing machinists represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) were on strike in the two states. IAM District W24 President Brandon Bryant said the layoffs announced in November did not include any members.
But more than 100 members of IAM District 837 in St. Louis, Missouri, are among the cuts, the Labor Tribune reported. Most of those laid off workers manufactured parts for the 777X, Boeing’s largest passenger plane, which is five years behind schedule for release.
