EVERETT – They say every girl dreams about her wedding day.
There’s the dress, the flowers, the cake.
And, in Sherry Simonyi’s case, there was a pink slip.
No, not the kind of slip a woman might wear under that fairytale dress, and certainly not the kind Simonyi dreamed. Instead this little pink slip temporarily put Simonyi’s prospective husband out of work from his job at Boeing Co.’s Everett factory.
By September 1970, Boeing laid off both Simonyi and her groom.
“When Boeing dumped all of those people, it almost brought us to our knees – the whole area,” Simonyi said. “Boeing was the employer in those days.”
For the couple, thousands of other Boeing workers and the neighboring communities, it was a harsh introduction to the boom-to-bust conditions of the aerospace industry.
Both Boeing and community leaders learned from that first major layoff. Although the following decades would hold more roller coaster ups and downs for Boeing and the region, both were better equipped to weather the aerospace storm.
When Boeing arrived in Everett in 1966, it brought with it the promise of 15,000 jobs and up to 68,000 people.
Simonyi recalls gas stations, restaurants and laundry mats popping up along the route to Boeing during its initial years to support the influx of workers. Construction workers scrambled to build homes fast enough to house everybody.
In 1966, Snohomish County handed 2,841 building permits, worth $24.2 million. The next year, the county saw a surge in permits of more than 7,558, worth more than $40 million. Everett and Snohomish County felt the impacts of Boeing’s boom.
Simonyi had begun working for Boeing in April 1966 at the developmental center supporting the supersonic transport program. She came to Everett in November 1967 as a personnel assistant. In the late 1960s, Boeing ran three full shifts seven days a week.
“That place was hopping,” Simonyi said.
The drop off in employment levels was dramatic and swift, Simonyi remembers. By March 1971, Boeing’s employment in the Puget Sound dropped from 101,000 people in 1968 to 42,000 in March 1971. The job climate in the Puget Sound following Boeing’s massive layoff inspired the now infamous billboard: “Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights?”
The industry, which had taken off with the 747 just months before, plummeted. At the end of 1969, Boeing had won 178 orders from 26 customers for its new jumbo jet, then a steal at a price of about $19 million. The company didn’t see a domestic airline order for its 747 for 18 months.
Since she worked in human resources, Simonyi knew which employees were getting laid off and when their last day would be. Yet she still had to walk by each person and act as if she didn’t know his or her fate.
“I laid everybody off and then I got laid off,” she said.
Everett, a town that had been on the verge of bust when Boeing bought in, suddenly saw an exodus unlike any it would see in the next 31/2 decades, with people abandoning their homes and mortgages.
John Monroe, retired Boeing executive, remembers those dark days in the region. He watched engineers with far more seniority and responsibility walk out the door. After receiving their pink slips, two in Monroe’s division committed suicide in their cars in Boeing’s parking lot.
“Those were really desperate times,” he said. “Back then, there was no place to go.”
In the early 1970s, Everett didn’t have much else to offer by way of employment. The town and its workers learned a tough lesson from that first major layoff, Monroe said. Businesses, even though heavily tied to aerospace, adapted by branching out, by finding other customers beside Boeing.
If someone got laid off from Boeing today, he or she could easily find a job at another aerospace company, Monroe said.
Retail and service-related businesses certainly take note of the booms and busts of Boeing. In the early 1970s, the then newly-built Everett Mall limped through the aerospace industry layoffs and survived to reap the benefit of bonuses negotiated by the unions in the next decade.
“Almost from day one, the cyclical nature of Boeing has been evident,” said Linda Johannes, the mall’s general manager. “I don’t think there’s a business in the Puget Sound region that doesn’t feel it.”
Over the years, Johannes has noticed how Boeing workers have become more reserved in their bonus spending, perhaps stashing money away for the next industry downturn.
The highs and lows of bonuses and employment have evened out a bit in the later half of the past decade. And that’s good for everyone, not just Boeing employees.
“It hurts all businesses when Boeing has an economic downturn,” she said. On the flip side, they feel the “breeze” of a Boeing boom as those laid off are called back to work.
After the 1970s layoff, Simonyi struggled to get her job back at Boeing’s Everett site. She worked at a couple of other companies but couldn’t find one that offered the benefits and salary that Boeing did.
Over the years, Boeing laid Simonyi off twice, her husband three times. Even though Simonyi hated being laid off, she always returned to the company when it rehired.
“You hear people say, ‘I’m never going back there,’ but they always did,” she said. “You just plan on being laid off again.”
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