On Monday (November 18), a document released by Boeing showed that the company will lay off more than 2,200 employees in the states of Washington and Oregon in the United States. This is part of the overall layoff plan of the heavily indebted American aircraft manufacturer. In October, Boeing announced plans to lay off approximately 17,000 people in the coming months, accounting for 10% of its global workforce.
According to Reuters, the aerospace giant began notifying American workers who will be laid off last Wednesday, with the deadline for the company to pay them until January 17, 2025. By federal regulations, employers are required to provide at least 60 days’ notice before terminating employment.
It is widely expected that Boeing will issue Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices in mid-November, with another round of notices expected to be issued in December.
Boeing’s newly appointed CEO, Kelly Ortberg, stated in October that the company does not intend to “stop production or leave the engineering lab.” Industry observers have been waiting for the issuance of WARN notices to understand the impact of the layoffs on the workers at Boeing’s major manufacturing centers.
However, among those who received layoff notices last week, several hundred were engineers and production workers.
The professional union, Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), stated that 438 members working at Boeing received layoff notices last week, including 218 engineers and 220 technicians.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District Lodge 837 based in St. Louis, Missouri, reported that Boeing issued layoff notices to 111 of its members, most of whom are workers producing wing components for the Boeing 777X aircraft.
Some engineers interviewed by Reuters expressed that laying them off would mean more work for those who remain. However, a former Boeing employee who was also laid off said, “This may be an opportunity for us to see who hasn’t been doing anything, who is a burden. There are many such people at Boeing, with low productivity, they are really not important.”
These layoff notices come as Boeing tries to resume production of its best-selling 737 MAX aircraft. Previously, the company’s production of most commercial jetliners was halted due to a weeks-long strike by over 33,000 workers on the U.S. West Coast.
Boeing declined to make further comments on the layoff issue on Monday.
In the afternoon on Monday, Boeing’s stock price rose by 2.7% to $143.90.