Boeing delays pink slips until Monday

Herald Staff and Associated Press

SEATTLE — The second round of 60-day layoff notices for Boeing Co. workers will be distributed Monday and not the day before Thanksgiving as previously planned, company officials said.

Union officials were not moved by the gesture.

"Bottom line is good people are going to lose good jobs," said Mark Blondin, the president of Machinists union District 751.

"There’s no way to lessen the blow or sugar-coat a layoff notice," added Bill Dugovich, the spokesman for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace. "It’s still bad news."

Boeing spokesman Bill Cogswell said Monday the company changed the date after realizing it could avoid giving people the bad news just before the holiday and still meet its schedule for completing the cuts by Jan. 25.

The upcoming round of job cuts are part of already announced plans to reduce the aerospace giant’s commercial airplanes work force by as much as 30 percent, or about 30,000 workers.

The company said the job cuts are necessary after demand for commercial airplanes plummeted after the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings.

In October, Boeing announced a first round of about 12,000 job cuts to be completed by Dec. 14. About 9,000 people were given layoff notices, and another 3,000 jobs were to be cut through attrition and laying off contract workers.

Cogswell said he did not know how many people would receive layoff notices Monday.

Blondin said he hasn’t had advance notice either, but he expects this round will be smaller than the cuts announced in October.

Boeing plans to continue handing out 60-day notices around the same time each month until the middle of next year, Cogswell said, when the layoffs are to be mostly completed.

The third round of notifications are scheduled for around Dec. 21. Cogswell said the company could not avoid announcing those layoffs just before the Christmas holiday and still meet its schedule for terminating workers toward the end of February.