Boeing lays off nearly 400 more people in Washington, state reports

The Boeing layoffs announced earlier this year will impact another nearly 400 workers in the state of Washington, a notice filed Monday with the Washington State Employment Security Department (ESD) states.

The worker adjustment and retraining notification (WARN) layoff and closure database update shows 396 Boeing workers were laid off. The layoffs will affect workers in “various locations in Washington” with the date listed as Feb. 21, 2025. The database also states the layoffs are permanent.

This latest news comes after the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) union announced Friday, in a short statement published on its website, that Boeing issued layoff notices to 222 members of the SPEEA union.

The new round of SPEEA layoffs affects 184 members of the professional unit and 38 members of the technical workers unit.

Last month, the state layoff and closure database update showed 2,199 Boeing workers were laid off. Most of those had a “layoff start date” listed as Jan. 20, 2025. But seven were listed as Dec. 20.

Just before the thousands of company-wide layoffs were announced, Boeing issued its first layoff notices to 438 SPEEA members. Overall, the layoffs affected 218 members of the professional unit and 220 members of the technical workers unit.

SPEEA represents 17,000 Boeing employees primarily based in Washington, with some members in Oregon, California and Utah.

October 2024: Boeing announces firm-wide layoffs

All of the recent layoffs are part of a company-wide effort to reduce its global workforce.

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a statement to employees in October the company would lay off about 10% of its staff, which amounts to about 17,000 job cuts overall, “over the coming months.”

“We must also reset our workforce levels to align with our financial reality and to a more focused set of priorities,” Ortberg said in the statement.

The CEO added in his statement the reductions will include executives, managers and employees.

“As we move through this process, we will maintain our steadfast focus on safety, quality and delivering for our customers,” Ortberg’s letter to employees states. “We know these decisions will cause difficulty for you, your families and our team, and I sincerely wish we could avoid taking them. However, the state of our business and our future recovery require tough actions.”

Before the layoff notices were delivered last week, Boeing had 66,000 workers in Washington.

Layoffs announced at Boeing during the machinist strike

The Boeing machinist union strike ended late on Nov. 4 after 59% of voting workers decided to accept the company’s latest offer.

The strike began Sept. 13 with an overwhelming 94.6% rejection of Boeing’s offer to raise pay by 25% over four years — far less than the union’s original demand for 40% wage increases over three years. The work stoppage drew the attention of the Biden administration. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su intervened in the talks several times.

It was another setback for the giant aircraft maker whose reputation and finances have been battered and now faces a shutdown in production of its best-selling airline planes.

Despite the ongoing strike, in his remarks as part of the 2023 third-quarter analysts call in October, Ortberg did not blame the strike for the layoffs. Instead, the CEO said it was vital to stabilize our business and “streamlining the portfolio to do what we do well.”

“We need to reset priorities and create a leaner, more focused organization,” Ortberg said. “We’ve recently announced a workforce reduction which will focus on consolidation of areas where we’re not efficient and we need to continue to focus on reducing non-essential activity.”

US judge rejects Boeing’s plea deal in a conspiracy case

In another issue the company is facing, a federal judge last week rejected a deal that would have let Boeing plead guilty to a felony conspiracy charge and pay a fine for misleading U.S. regulators about the 737 Max jetliner before two of the planes crashed, killing 346 people.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas said that diversity, inclusion and equity or DEI policies in the government and at Boeing could result in race being a factor in picking an official to oversee Boeing’s compliance with the agreement.

The ruling creates uncertainty around the criminal prosecution of the aerospace giant in connection with the development of its bestselling airline plane.

The judge gave Boeing and the Justice Department 30 days to tell him how they plan to proceed. They could negotiate a new plea agreement, or prosecutors could move to put the company on trial.

Boeing negotiated the plea deal only after the Justice Department determined this year that Boeing violated a 2021 agreement that had protected it against criminal prosecution on the same fraud-conspiracy charge.

The 2021 deferred-prosecution agreement was due to expire in January, and it was widely expected that prosecutors would seek to permanently drop the matter. Just days before that, however, a door plug blew off a 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon.

That incident renewed concerns about manufacturing quality and safety at Boeing and put the company under intense scrutiny by regulators and lawmakers.

The case is just one of many challenges facing Boeing, which has lost more than $23 billion since 2019 and fallen behind Airbus in selling and delivering new planes.

Contributing: The Associated Press; Bill Kaczaraba, MyNorthwest

Steve Coogan is the lead editor of MyNorthwest. You can read more of his stories here. Follow Steve on X, or email him here.