Boeing starts furloughing tens of thousands of employees amid machinist strike
Boeing will temporarily furlough thousands of U.S. executives, managers and other staff, citing the ongoing machinist strike as the company races to preserve cash, CEO Kelly Ortberg told employees on Wednesday.
Boeing will temporarily furlough thousands of U.S. executives, managers and other staff, citing the ongoing machinist strike as the company races to preserve cash, CEO Kelly Ortberg told employees on Wednesday.
The furloughs will affect tens of thousands of Boeing employees, a company spokesperson said.
The plan came less than a week after Boeing’s more than 30,000 machinists in the Seattle area and Oregon overwhelmingly voted down a new labor contract and 96% voted to strike, walking off the job just after midnight on Friday.
Negotiations between the two sides continued this week with a mediator. Boeing had offered a 25% raise and the union endorsed the tentative contract. But some workers told CNBC that the contract offer was rejected because the raises weren’t sufficient enough to match the increase in cost of living in the Seattle area and it didn’t restore their pensions.
Ortberg, who has been in the job for just under six weeks, said in a staff memo that affected employees would take one week of furlough every four weeks for the strike’s duration and he and his team would take “commensurate” pay cuts for the duration of the strike.
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