Boeing plans to lay off about 10% of its workers —about 17,000 people — in the coming months as it continues to lose money and tries to deal with a strike that is crippling production of the company’s best-selling airline planes, according to the Associated Press.
New CEO Kelly Ortberg told staff in a memo Friday that the job cuts will include executives, managers, and employees. The company has about 170,000 employees worldwide. Boeing had already imposed rolling temporary furloughs, but Ortberg said those will be suspended because of the impending layoffs.
The company will further delay the rollout of a new plane, the 777X, to 2026 instead of 2025. It will also stop building the cargo version of its 767 jet in 2027 after finishing current orders.
Boeing has lost more than $25 billion since the start of 2019.
About 33,000 union machinists have been on strike since Sept. 14. Two days of talks this week failed to produce a deal, and Boeing filed an unfair-labor-practices charge against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
As it announced layoffs, Boeing also gave a preliminary report on its third-quarter financial results — and the news is not good for the company.
Boeing said it burned through $1.3 billion in cash during the quarter and lost $9.97 per share. Industry analysts had been expecting the company to lose $1.61 per share in the quarter, according to a FactSet survey, but analysts were likely unaware of some large write-downs that Boeing announced Friday — a $2.6 billion charge related to delays of the 777X, $400 million for the 767, and $2 billion for defense and space programs including new Air Force One jets, a space capsule for NASA, and a military refueling tanker.
The company, based in Arlington, Virginia, said it had $10.5 billion in cash and marketable securities on Sept. 30. Boeing is scheduled to release full third-quarter numbers on Oct. 23.
