Boeing issues 2,900 layoff notices in latest job cuts

Boeing issued layoff notices to 2,900 employees yesterday as its second round of job cuts reached airplane assembly-line workers in Renton and Everett as well as people idled by Boeing's loss of the Joint Strike Fighter military contract.

Puget Sound-area workers made up 1,900 of yesterday's cuts, and members of the Machinists union accounted for 60 percent of the layoffs in the region.

The latest batch of 60-day layoff warnings brings to 14,900 the number of Boeing employees nationwide who will lose their jobs between Dec. 14 and Jan. 25 as part of the aerospace company's deepest downsizing in three decades.

Including 12,000 job cuts announced Oct. 12, Boeing has now eliminated half of the 30,000 jobs it said it would eliminate by the end of next year.

If Boeing maintains the current pace, all 30,000 workers could be gone by June.

Most of the latest Machinists layoffs will occur among workers involved in the final stages of building jetliners, such as assemblers and installers, sealers and painters, said Mark Blondin, president of Machinists District 751.

In the first round of layoffs, hourly workers in the front end of the production cycle, such as parts fabrication and subassembly, were hardest hit.

Although yesterday's cuts were one-third the number of Machinists layoff notices in October, "that's still a very significant number," said Blondin, whose union has recruited 50 manufacturing and technology companies for a job fair Dec. 11.

Boeing is paring its commercial-airplanes work force by up to 30 percent because its monthly jetliner-production rate will drop 50 percent by the middle of next year.

Layoffs have also hit employees assigned to military programs, such as the Joint Strike Fighter contract ultimately won by Lockheed. Affected, too, are 70 people who work on Connexion, Boeing's nascent in-flight e-mail service business that has been hard hit by the airline industry's financial struggles.

Boeing had planned to redeploy 200 of its 600 Connexion workers by the end of next month.

Workers will lose their jobs only if Boeing is unable to reassign them to another part of the company, said Terrance Scott, a spokesman for Connexion.

About 460 salaried workers in the Puget Sound area, including 190 members of the engineering union, will lose their jobs in January.

Boeing also is laying off 700 people nationwide who work for its Bellevue-based shared-services unit, which provides administrative and support functions such as employee benefits, food services and security.

Unlike the job cuts announced last month — 25 percent of which were to come from attrition, retirements and the release of contract workers — all 2,900 workers who received notices yesterday face layoffs. Boeing still expects attrition to cushion some layoffs in the future, said Tom Ryan, a company spokesman.

Boeing will issue its third round of notices Dec. 21. The number of cuts announced each month will fluctuate but probably will stay in the same range as yesterday's, said Bill Cogswell, a Boeing spokesman.

Kyung M. Song can be reached at 206-464-2423 or ksong@seattletimes .com. Seattle Times aerospace reporter David Bowermaster contributed to this report.