Boeing layoffs hit Florida, includes Tampa, St. Petersburg

Boeing, the troubled Virginia-based airline manufacturer coming off of a major strike, $6 billion in losses and facing federal scrutiny over malfunctioning equipment, is laying off 141 employees in Florida as part of major job cuts nationwide.

The job losses in the state are mostly in facilities along the east coast, where the company has a big presence in the aerospace industry.

Seven, though, are in the Tampa Bay region — six in St. Petersburg and one in Tampa. The job titles for those positions were not immediately available but could be remote workers or individuals attached to specific clients.

The layoffs, according to a letter sent to meet federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification requirements, are expected to begin Jan. 17.

According to Boeing, eligible employees will receive severance pay, career transition services, and subsidized health care benefits up to three months after exiting the company.

“As previously announced, we are adjusting our workforce levels to align with our financial reality and a more focused set of priorities,” a company spokesperson says in an email Tuesday. “We are committed to ensuring our employees have support during this challenging time.”

In October the company announced it was cutting its workforce by 10%, about 17,000 people.

In a letter to employees and investors at the time, Boeing’s president and CEO Robert K. "Kelly" Ortberg wrote that the cuts would include executives and managers as well as other employees.

Courtesy image

“Our business is in a difficult position, and it is hard to overstate the challenges we face together,” he wrote.

“Beyond navigating our current environment, restoring our company requires tough decisions and we will have to make structural changes to ensure we can stay competitive and deliver for our customers over the long term.”

The announcement came as about 33,000 union machinists were in the midst of a two-month strike that was resolved in November.

Ortberg, the company’s third CEO in about five years, also announced at the time that it was delaying its new plane, the 777X, by a year to 2026 and that it would stop producing its 767 Freighters in 2027.

Boeings troubles the past few years have been well documented.

According to the Associated Press:

• Two of the company’s 737 Max jets crashed — in Indonesia in October 2018 and in Ethiopia in March 2019 — killing 346 people.
• The company came under increased scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Authority after a panel blew out of a 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
• In August NASA decided to scrub a mission to bring two astronauts back to Earth from the International Space Station deeming a Boeing spacecraft wasn’t safe enough.
• In October it agreed to plead guilty and pay a $244 million fine for conspiracy to commit fraud tied to the jet.

Ortberg, in a call with investors when the company released its third-quarter earnings report in October, said Boeing was “at a crossroads” and much work needed to be done to “turn this big ship in the right direction and restore Boeing to the leadership position that we all know and want.”

He said trust in the company had eroded, that it was saddled with too much debt and that there had been “serious lapses in our performance.”

“Much has been written about how we got to where we are, but most also recognize that Boeing was once a benchmark for what good culture looks like,” he said. “And I believe we can return to that legacy.”

Boeing’s third-quarter earnings report showed a net loss of $6.17 billion for the three months ending Sept. 30.