Boeing will cut 10% of its workforce in coming weeks and had called a halt to its 767 freighter program. It announced the changes on Friday, as the company deals with a strike called last month by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
About 33,000 union members walked off the job in mid-September, after having rejected a four-year contract. The company says the union had made “unreasonable demands,” and this week filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the union of bad faith bargaining and using with a campaign of misinformation to sabotage negotiations, actions that have harmed the company and its workers.
Included in the job cuts are workers at every level, from executives to factory workers. CEO Kelly Ortberg said the layoffs will take place over the “coming months” and will be worldwide.
Boeing employs about 170,000 workers; about 150,000 of the workers are in the United States and the company supports 1.6 million direct and indirect jobs, and $79 billion in economic benefit to the country. It has major plants in Everett and Renton, Washington, in South Carolina and Missouri. Everett’s Boeing plant is the world’s largest manufacturing building.
The striking portion of the workforce equals more than 19% of the company’s employees that are refusing to work.
“We need to be clear-eyed about the work we face and realistic about the time it will take to achieve key milestones on the path to recovery. We also need to focus our resources on performing and innovating in the areas that are core to who we are, rather than spreading ourselves across too many efforts that can often result in underperformance and underinvestment,” the email said.
The strike has frozen production of Boeing 737 Max, which impacts Alaska Airlines more than any other customer. Alaska Airlines had been expecting to take delivery of 14 737 Maxes from September through December, 2024.
Boeing will finish deliver the 29 remaining 767 model freighters that customers have ordered, but then end that program in 2027. Those models are built in Everett, Wash. The 767 freighters are much favored by Amazon, UPS, and FedEx, which fly them through Anchorage frequently.
The company will, however, continue to produce the KC-46A tanker, also built in Everett.
Otberg’s email said there will also be a delivery delay of the 777X airplane until 2026. The 777X program, like the 737, is located in Everett.
Build a bad product that kills people what did you expect.
Given recent quality issues with Boeing aircraft I’m not convinced these union employee’s should still have jobs making aircraft….
A little more research might change your mind. To my knowledge. all except the fatal crash of the 737 were due to maintenance issues and not construction issues. The crashes were due to software issues, not construction issues. The union employees were doing just fine.
I am not a union fan. But that does not mean they should be bashed for something outside their scope.
Your knowledge of Boeing is limited. There have been multiple whistleblowers at Boeing ( some of whom are now deceased), who have testified about shoddy workplace practices on the production floor!
Fantastic aviation reporting Suzanne. I love the details you provided.
From a union member……UNIONS SUCK!!!! All they do is punish the average person at the gain of the union member. The union bosses live like fat pigs.
The Democrat Party runs Washington State because of the strong union presence in that state, primarily Boeing. The economic repercussions of this kind of strike will be felt worldwide. Interesting that the strike occured less than two months before the US election.
FAFO, that’s what’s happening. What they get for falling for DEI hires.
When Boeing was run by aviation engineers it was a strong, innovative company. In the early 90s along came the management consultants like McKinsey, who persuaded them to focus on things like developing lofty Mission, Vision, and Values statements, driving up quarterly stock prices, and pegging management bonuses to short term goals, and so on. It didn’t take long for them to push out all the veteran designers and engineers and replace them with accountants and business school graduates. The merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997 only reinforced the new bean-counting mindset. When Boeing moved its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001 (and recently to Arlington, VA) it was clear that the game was lost. It has never been the same.
How are those widely implemented d.e.i. policies working out for you Boeing?
Seems you are in the “gradually, then suddenly phase”.
It would be funny if it wasn’t such a tragedy for your many soon to be ex-workers.
Perfect time to bring the country down. Democrats suck. They suck the life out of everything. 2 wars going 2 natural disasters and now this. It would not completely surprise me if the creepy democrats are manipulating the weather to cause these events. I guess we should call them what they are. Not Democrats. They are fricking Marxists. In the end they lose.
Calling a strike when the company is already in financial difficulty is counterproductive for the union. Layoffs are inevitable.
The 737 is built in Renton, the 777x in Everett.
There is a very obvious attempt to bust Boeing commercial company. Is it black rock or who trying to take control ?? I smell a rat. As for the layoffs remember is at least 5 service sector jobs to every factory job so this layoff is going to impact Washington hard . We talking 85.000 jobs gone.
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