American aircraft manufacturer The Boeing Company is poised to announce retrenchment in the United States this week based on a disclosure that it planned to let go of 10% of its worldwide last month. As of this writing, the total workforce the company stands at 160,000 employees.
Reuters reported that according to the spokesperson of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) union, representing around 17,600 of Boeing employees, the company informed the union it should expect layoff notices on Friday. Boeing has yet to comment on this matter. SPEEA said about 1,300 of its members applied to take voluntary layoffs.
Boeing’s Chief Executive Dave Calhoun said the company begun taking action to lower the number of employees by roughly 10% through a combination of voluntary layoffs, natural turnover, and involuntary layoffs as necessary since last month. He added that they will need to make “even deeper reductions in areas that are most exposed to the condition of our commercial customers — more than 15% across our commercial airplanes and services businesses, as well as our corporate functions.”
One of the union’s officials confirmed the report that Boeing had told their organization’s leaders to expect cuts of between 15% to 20% of its membership — engineers and technical workers in Washington State and Southern California.
Boeing posted zero orders for the second time this year, and customers canceling some 108 orders for the 737 MAX plane (which are still ground as of today). The pandemic worsened a crisis following the second of two fatal crashes that led to the grounding of the 737 MAX in March 2019.