As aerospace giant Boeing prepares to cut its workforce by 10 percent, it’s warning Colorado that some of those layoffs will be at its facilities in the state.
In a letter to Colorado employment officials, the company said it will lay off 63 employees in Denver, El Paso and Arapahoe counties. The layoffs will take effect in mid-January.
Boeing announced in October that it planned to cut around 17,000 jobs in the coming months. CEO Kelly Ortberg told employees the company must “reset its workforce levels to align with our financial reality.”
The cuts are spread across Boeing’s commercial, defense and global services divisions. According to Colorado’s Labor Department, the company’s Colorado offices work on satellite telecommunications, as well as engineering and technical support services.
The company is struggling to recover from financial and regulatory trouble as well as an eight-week strike by its machinists' union. It has already delivered layoff notices to more than 400 members of its professional aerospace labor union, the Seattle Times reported.
Boeing’s unionized machinists began returning to work earlier this month following the strike.
The strike strained Boeing’s finances. But Ortberg said on an October call with analysts that it did not cause the layoffs, which he described as a result of overstaffing.
Boeing, based in Arlington, Virginia, has been under greater regulatory scrutiny and in financial straits since a panel blew off the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines plane in January. Production rates slowed to a crawl, and the Federal Aviation Administration capped production of the 737 MAX at 38 planes per month, a threshold Boeing has yet to reach.
