Latest Boeing layoff includes 458 Machinists

Boeing issued new 60-day layoff notices today to about 900 employees, about 700 of them in the Puget Sound region.

Among those given new layoff notices Friday were 458 Machinists union members. Only a small number of members in the white-collar engineering union, probably less than 20, will be affected.

In January, chief executive Jim McNerney said Boeing would cut 10,000 jobs companywide this year through attrition and layoffs. Of that total, 4,500 will come from the Commercial Airplanes unit, most of which is based here.

About 650 of those who got notices today work in the Commercial Airplanes unit.

Boeing also has let go hundreds of contract employees. And within the commercial airplane unit, about 1,000 of the year's job cuts will come through not filling positions left open at the beginning of the year.

This is the third monthly wave of layoff notices, bringing the total so far this year to about 2,700 companywide, including 1,400 in the Commercial Airplanes unit.

For one batch of local Boeing workers — some of the 190 Machinist union facilities workers who received the first layoff notices in January — today was their final day at work. (Others in that group have been placed into new positions elsewhere in the company.)

More than 2,100 Boeing employees in the Puget Sound region now have received layoff notices that take effect this month through May.

A previous version of this story, originally published March 20, 2009 and corrected on the same date, said that the layoff notices issued Friday were the second wave of such notices from Boeing in Washington State. In fact, Boeing has issued notices each month so far this year: 190 in January; two batches of 478 and then 1,100 in February; and now 900 more.