SEATTLE — Boeing has issued layoff notices to more than 400 members of its professional aerospace union, part of thousands of planned cuts as the company struggles to recover from financial and regulatory problems, as well as an eight-week strike by its machinists union.
The pink slips went out last week to members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, or SPEEA, The Seattle Times reported. The employees will remain on the payroll until mid-January.
Boeing announced in October that it would cut 10 percent of its workforce, about 17,000 jobs, in the coming months. CEO Kelly Ortberg told employees that the company must “reset the workforce to align with our financial reality.”
The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) union said the cuts had affected 438 members. The union’s local chapter has 17,000 Boeing employees, mostly based in Washington, with some in Oregon, California and Utah.
Of those 438 employees, 218 are members of SPEEA’s professional unit, which also includes engineers and scientists. The rest are members of the technical unit, which includes analysts, planners, technicians and professionals.
Eligible employees will receive career transition services and subsidized health care benefits for up to three months. Employees also receive severance pay, usually approximately one week’s pay for each year of service.
Boeing’s unionized machinists returned to work after the strike earlier this month.
The strike put pressure on Boeing’s finances. But Ortberg said on a call with analysts in October that this was not the cause of the layoffs, which he described as a result of overstaffing.
Boeing, based in Arlington, Virginia, has been in financial and regulatory trouble since a panel blew the fuselage off an Alaska Airlines plane in January. Production numbers fell to a crawl and the Federal Aviation Administration limited production of the 737 MAX to 38 planes per month, a threshold Boeing has yet to reach.
