Boeing to Slash 2,000 Jobs, ‘Streamlining’ Will Include Work Outsourced to India

Employees are pictured as the first Boeing 737 MAX 7 is unveiled in Renton, Washington on Feb. 5, 2018. Jason Redmond/Reuters

American aviation firm Boeing intends to lay off two thousand jobs this year as part of a reduction in certain support services, with a part of the work shifted to India, after the firm had earlier committed to hiring 10,000 workers in 2023.

“We expect about 2,000 reductions primarily in Finance and HR through a combination of attrition and layoffs,” Boeing said in a statement Monday, according to The Associated Press. “While no one has been notified of job loss, we will continue to share information transparently to allow people to plan.”

As of Dec. 31, the company employed 156,000 people.

A third of the eliminated jobs will be moved to India, managed by Tata Consulting Services. The remaining jobs will disappear as the firm intends to reduce the workforce in its finance and HR support services, Mike Friedman, a senior director of communications at Boeing, told The Seattle Times.

“Over time, some of our corporate functions have grown quite large. And with that growth tends to come bureaucracy or disparate systems that are inefficient,” Friedman said. “So, we’re streamlining.”

Around 1,500 of the job cuts will come from the finance department, according to the outlet, with up to 400 more from HR.

Workforce Adjustments

In January, Boeing announced its intent to hire 10,000 new workers this year while admitting that certain support positions would be trimmed.

The Virginia-based firm justified the scaling down of staff as a move aimed at aligning resources to better support the company’s present technology development and products. In 2022, Boeing announced plans to terminate 150 finance jobs in the United States.

While Boeing now intends to cut 2,000 white-collar jobs, the company will also push to hire more production workers and engineers, Friedman said.

This will ensure that the firm will “significantly grow” in 2023, he added while pointing to the Puget Sound region in the Pacific Northwest as a potential beneficiary of such development.

Meanwhile, the non-engineering work being transferred to India will be done in Tata Consulting Services’ new facility in Bengaluru, located in the state of Karnataka. At present, Boeing has 3,500 direct workers in India and employs 7,000 more through its suppliers.

Aviation Job Cuts

Boeing is not the only American aviation firm that is laying off employees. Last month, Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin announced plans to eliminate 800 of its 35,000 positions in the Rotary and Mission Systems program.

“To improve efficiencies, position the business to remain cost competitive and address changes in program lifecycles, we made a difficult decision to reduce a limited number of positions within our Rotary and Mission Systems business segment,” the company said in a statement, according to News 8.

“We will work to identify other opportunities within the company for affected employees, where possible,” it added.

Last week, Collins Aerospace, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, filed a notice with the state’s Department of Commerce saying that it intends to lay off 195 workers and permanently shut down two facilities in Winston on or around June 30.

Team members are expected to remain employed until or at least 14 days prior to the shutdown. The layoff and shutdown plan will “right-size” the company’s operations and help the firm remain competitive, it said in a statement, according to Triad Business Journal. Collins Aerospace is a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies.

In contrast, European aircraft maker Airbus plans to boost its workforce. In January, the company said that it intends to hire over 13,000 people globally this year.