Boeing announced that it has so far laid off 2,199 employees in Washington state, according to a notice submitted to Washington’s Employment Security Department.
The company began drastic workforce cuts on November 1, 2024, issuing employment termination notices to more than 400 members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA). The union represents around 17,000 Boeing workers in Washington, Oregon, California and Utah.
Of the 438 employees who were laid off, 218 are members of SPEEA’s professional unit, including engineers and scientists, while 220 were from the technical unit, which includes technicians, as reported by The Seattle Times. These workers will be paid until mid-January 2025 and will receive subsidized health care benefits for up to three months.
“We’re not breaking down the types of workers or by geography/facility,” Bobbie Egan, a company spokesperson, said in an emailed statement to Washington State Standard on November 18, 2024. “The layoffs are across Boeing.”
On October 14, 2024, the planemaker announced that it would be issuing 60-day layoff notices to employees, impacting around 17,000 workers, around 10% of Boeing’s total workforce. The company employs about 66,000 people in Washington state.
The job cuts follow a seven-week strike by 33,000 workers on the US West Coast, which began in mid-September 2024 and ended on November 5, 2024, after 58% of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) union members voted in favor of a new pay agreement that will increase salaries by 38%.
Boeing is currently working to recover its financial stability after the strike action led to a loss of $6.17 billion in the third quarter of 2024.