Boeing has approved buyouts for more than 1,800 union workers, marking the start of a new round of job reductions that’s expected to continue through the year.
The voluntary layoffs include 1,500 machinists and 305 engineers, representatives of the workers’ unions told GeekWire today. Boeing Commercial Airplanes is reducing non-union positions as well, but the company isn’t providing numbers for those classifications.
The company said in December that it would have to continue last year’s downward trend in employment to stay competitive with Airbus, its European aerospace rival.
Last year’s job reductions amounted to about 8 percent of the workforce in Boeing’s commercial airplane division, going from roughly 82,500 to a little more than 76,000 employees by the end of 2016. The reductions were achieved through voluntary and involuntary layoffs as well as attrition.
About 1,200 engineers were laid off during all of last year, said Bill Dugovich, a spokesman for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, or SPEEA. He said 350 of those layoffs were involuntary.
Dugovich expects this year’s totals to be about the same. “We know there’s going to be more,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Machinists Union District 751, Connie Kelliher, said her union doesn’t know how many more will be laid off this year. She said about 1,000 machinists took voluntary buyouts last year, but there were no forced layoffs.
The 1,800-plus buyouts that were approved as of the end of February will take effect over the course of the rest of the year, typically starting in April.
Laid-off machinists are to receive one week’s pay for every year of service, up to 26 weeks of pay, plus six months of standard medical benefits, Kelliher said. Engineers will get similar levels of severance pay, but typically only three months of standard medical benefits. Those who are laid off due to a shift in work location could get more, Dugovich said.
