SEATTLE (AP) – Boeing said in a notice filed with the Department of Employment Security in Washington on Monday that it has so far laid off 2,199 workers in the state, amid job cuts that will eventually reach 17,000 company-wide.
The airline giant announced in October that it plans to cut about 10% of its workforce in the coming months as it struggles to recover from financial and regulatory problems and a nearly two-month-long factory strike.
The planned reductions 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 have an impact on employees in all three divisions of Boeing: commercial aircraft, defense and global services.
Before the layoff notices announced last week, Boeing had 66,000 workers in Washington.
Among those laid off so far are notices issued last week to more than 400 members of Boeing’s professional aerospace workers union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, or SPEA. Workers will continue to be paid until mid-January.
Unionized Boeing machinists began returning to work earlier this month following a strike.
The strike disrupted Boeing’s finances. But CEO Kelly Ortberg said in an October call with analysts that it is not causing layoffs, which he described as the result of overcrowding.
Boeing, based in Arlington, Virginia, has been in financial trouble since two crashes of its 737 Max plane killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. in January.
Production rates dropped to a crawl, and the Federal Aviation Administration halted production of the 737 MAX at 38 planes per month, a limit Boeing had not yet reached when a machinist strike halted assembly lines.
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