By Bryan Corliss
Herald Writer
The Boeing Co. is eliminating 160 Everett engineers and moving the work they do to the company’s design center in Russia, the union for engineers and technicians said Friday.
Boeing spokesmen acknowledged that work now done here is being sent to Moscow, but claimed it’s part of commitments made to Russian officials well before the post-Sept. 11 layoffs were announced.
But there’s not a one-to-one link between the people being laid off here and the jobs being created there, Commercial Airplanes Group spokesman Tom Koehler said.
"It’s not as simple as saying the jobs are going to be moving to Moscow," he said. "It’s a little bit more complicated."
But it seems pretty cut and dried to officials at the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, who say the shift is exacerbating hard feelings caused by the ongoing layoffs.
"It’s hitting some of our people very personally," said Pat Waters, an Everett engineer who serves on the union’s national council. "Does this have an impact on morale, or what?"
The engineers affected do structural work on Everett-built wide-body jets — 747s, 767s and 777s, the union said. That covers a range of tasks involving the structure of the plane, such as determining how moving the location of a lavatory would affect overall performance.
"These aren’t shop jobs," Waters said. "These are engineering jobs."
According to the union, the work done by 160 engineers here will be phased out by the end of next year and moved to Moscow. Union spokesman Bill Dugovich said the information came from memos distributed by the company to employees in the Everett group.
That’s not the case, said Koehler and fellow Boeing spokesman Chuck Cadena.
While Boeing does plan to move work to Moscow, "no specific decisions have been made" as to what kinds of work will be shifted, Koehler said.
Boeing has about 300 engineers in Moscow now and plans to add fewer than 100 to the workforce this year, Koehler said.
The jobs in Everett are being eliminated for a number of reasons, including the slump in orders caused by the post-Sept. 11 airline industry crisis, Koehler said. So to say the jobs are being eliminated solely to send work to Russia is not accurate, he added.
At the same time, Boeing is moving to become more global, Koehler said.
Boeing sells the majority of its planes overseas, he noted. Because of that, "we need to do business in those areas."
Doing that means "we’re able to use talented people," he said. "We’re able to gain market access."
The move fits Boeing’s goal to focus its Puget Sound efforts on large-scale systems integration, while shifting small-scale work elsewhere, Cadena said. And it reduces the company’s overall cost structure, he said.
According to the union, Boeing spends an average of $120 an hour on wages and benefits for U.S. engineers, but only $40 an hour for their Russian counterparts.
Waters and Dugovich said union engineers are uncomfortable with a number of aspects of the proposal. Working with the Moscow center means working with people in another time zone, another language and unknown skill levels.
Those are issues, but "they’re nothing new," Cadena said. "It’s a challenge we’ve been faced with before."
You can call Herald Writer Bryan Corliss at 425-339-3454
or send e-mail to corliss@heraldnet.com.
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