RENTON, Wash. — Hundreds of SPEEA employees are included in Boeing's sweeping job cuts, the union confirmed to KING 5 on Thursday night.
SPEEA, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, represents more than 17,000 engineers, technical workers, pilots and other aerospace industry professionals. The union confirmed that 438 of their Boeing employees will be laid off, including 218 members of their professional unit and 220 technical employees.
The union has set up joint meetings with representatives of the Washington Employment Security Department to help their laid-off members understand their rights under the SPEEA contract and help them apply for unemployment. Earlier this year, the union revealed that they had negotiated a specific layoff procedure, which includes the payment of cash benefits.
Boeing itself has been tight-lipped about who exactly is getting laid off, saying that they will not be sharing that level of detail about the job cuts. The company did say both union and non-union employees and managers, and executives are included.
In October, Boeing said striking machinists with the IAM District 751 would not be impacted by the job cuts. The union represents 33,000 machinists employed by the aerospace giant. The company and the union recently came to a contract agreement and returned to work - however several jet production lines were completely halted during negotiations, and Boeing was estimated to be losing $1 billion a month.
Boeing has not confirmed whether the layoffs are related to the financial blow of the strike but did say they would move forward with the job cuts regardless of the contract agreement with the machinists' union.