June 28--Boeing issued layoff warning notices to 266 more workers in the Puget Sound area Thursday bring to more than 1,500 the number of workers it has told they will be losing their jobs this year.
The latest notices were the fourth round this year by the aerospace company. Boeing has said it is trimming its forces here as work on major developmental projects such as the 747-8 and the 787-8 and 787-9 airliners diminishes.
The company has said it will lay off as many as 1,700 engineers and technical workers this year.
The workers receiving notices this week will be laid off beginning August 23 unless they are able to find other positions in the company.
Boeing's Washington workforce has dropped 1,049 employees between Dec. 20 last year and May 30 this year. At the end of May, the company employed 85,431 workers in Washington compared with 86,431 at the end of 2012.
The May 2013 figure is about the same number of workers Boeing had on its Washington payroll in July of last year. Until it started to reduce its payroll earlier this year, Boeing had hired thousands of new workers in Washington as its plane orders jumped and its developmental work on new airliners and tankers and surveillance planes for the military increased.
The company says it wants to cut its employment ranks company-wide to trim costs. Boeing has potential obligations of hundreds of millions of dollars to airlines who saw their 787s grounded by battery problems for four months earlier this year.
The company is also moving some operations out of the Puget Sound area including some information technology business to St. Louis and Charleston, S.C. and support activities for older airliners to California. The company also is shutting down its training center in Tukwila and consolidating that activity in Miami, where it neither builds nor designs planes.
Copyright 2013 - The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)
