Nearly 2,200 WA Boeing workers receive layoff notices as company begins staff reductions

WASHINGTON STATE — Boeing said in a notice filed with Washington’s Employment Security Department (ESD) on Monday that it has so far laid off 2,199 workers in the state, among job cuts that will eventually total about 17,000 across the company.

The aerospace giant announced in October that it planned to cut 10% of its workforce, about 17,000 jobs, in the coming months as it struggles to recover from financial and regulatory troubles as well as a strike by its machinists that lasted nearly two months.

CEO Kelly Ortberg told employees the company must “reset its workforce levels to align with our financial reality.”

Before the layoff notices were delivered last week, Boeing had 66,000 workers in Washington. According to the ESD, those layoffs are permanent and expected to start on Dec. 20.

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Among the layoffs so far are notices that went out last week to more than 400 members of Boeing’s professional aerospace labor union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, or SPEEA. The workers will remain on the payroll through mid-January.

The decision to lay off employees comes from the company’s $25 billion in losses over the past five years, according to Ortberg. The losses are partially attributed to the fatal crashes of the MAX jets in 2018 and 2019, and a door plug blowout over Oregon earlier this year.

Production rates slowed to a crawl, and the Federal Aviation Administration capped production of the 737 MAX at 38 planes per month, a threshold Boeing had yet to reach when the machinists’ strike halted assembly lines.

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The strike strained Boeing’s finances. But Ortberg said on an October call with analysts that it did not cause the layoffs, which he described as a result of overstaffing.

KOMO News has reached out to Boeing for comment on the newly reported layoff numbers.