Boeing issues layoff notices to 130 in state, 300 companywide

Boeing issued layoff notices Friday to about 300 employees companywide, about 130 of those in Washington state.

Roughly half of the local layoffs, about 60, were in the defense division. About 15 employees from the Commercial Airplanes unit also got layoff notices.

The rest of the Washington state layoffs, roughly 50, were among nonunion, white-collar computer systems staff.

Located mostly in Bellevue, these are software engineers and technicians who support Boeing's mainframe computers, which are used to run the databases for everything from company payroll to the availability of airplane spare parts.

As a cost-saving measure, Boeing is outsourcing the mainframe work to Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) of El Segundo, Calif.

In February, Boeing issued layoff notices to 520 local employees and an additional 500 at other sites, most of whom were also information technology (IT) employees, part of the company's Engineering, Operations & Technology unit.

In 2003, CSC took over computer-systems monitoring, support and administration at Boeing's defense unit. In 2007, CSC took over that role throughout Boeing, resulting in 149 employees being laid off.

In 2007, CSC had also bid to take over Boeing's mainframe operations, but the bid came in higher than the in-house operation. And at the time, Boeing spokeswoman Cathy Rudolph said "There is no overarching strategy to outsource large portions of IT work."

Now, however, the mainframe work is gone too in what Rudolph described as "an expansion of an existing business relationship."

A person familiar with the details said Boeing had only within the past month finished consolidating its mainframe operations into the Bellevue site from around the country.

The person, who asked not to be identified, said that New York-based mainframe software provider CA (formerly Computer Associates) notified Boeing that it would raise its licensing fees steeply. By outsourcing to CSC, which has an existing fee arrangement with CA, Boeing avoids the fee increases.

Rudolph did not respond to requests for comment on that detail.

In an e-mail, she said Boeing does not anticipate "many additional reductions in IT for the rest of the year."

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com