SEATTLE — Job cuts at Boeing keep on coming.
The company told staff in a memo Monday that “hundreds of Engineering employees” in Washington state and other company sites — but not in North Charleston, S.C. — will receive layoff notices Friday.
This follows a round of voluntary buyouts Boeing offered in January. That proposal was accepted by more than 300 engineering staff and 1,500 members of the Machinists union.
About 1,000 machinists who accepted that buyout offer will leave permanently on Friday.
In late March, Boeing issued an earlier round of 245 involuntary layoffs, including 62 engineering staff and 111 machinists. Those also did not affect the Charleston site.
Despite the earlier rounds of voluntary reductions and layoffs, plus further cuts through natural attrition, “we need to reduce our employment level further,” wrote John Hamilton, vice president of engineering at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, in Monday’s memo to the company’s engineers.
Hamilton also indicated that there are likely more layoffs coming later this year.
“We anticipate (Friday’s notices) will impact hundreds of Engineering employees,” Hamilton wrote. “Additional reductions in Engineering later this year w ill be driven by our business environment and the amount of voluntary attrition.”
Hamilton’s memo applies only to engineering staff.
Bill Dugovich, spokesman for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace said the union is trying to get further information from the company about the planned layoffs.
International Association of Machinists spokeswoman Connie Kelliher said that union has not been informed by the company of any imminent layoffs.
Boeing cut almost 7,400 jobs in Washington state last year.
Then in December, Boeing Vice Chairman Ray Conner and the new chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Kevin McAllister, issued a joint message to employees warning that “fewer sales opportunities and tough competition” would drive further cuts in 2017.
That warning followed on the heels of a decision to cut 777 production in Everett from seven planes per month to five per month beginning in August.
That move was forced by a continuing slump in widebody jet sales.
Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said Boeing South Carolina will not be hit by this round of layoffs.
That manufacturing complex in North Charleston has cut 110 jobs this year through attrition, all achieved without involuntary layoffs.
Boeing South Carolina’s current workforce of 7,455 is down 787 people from its peak last May.
