The aerospace manufacturer Boeing will lay off 17,000 employees—10 percent of its workforce—amid a strike, production delays, and safety concerns with its aircraft, its CEO Kelly Ortberg announced Friday.
Ortberg, who took the company’s reins in August, said, “Our business is in a difficult position, and it is hard to overstate the challenges we face together… 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 company, which last reported a profit in 2018, saw its largest, 33,000-person union walk out almost a month ago after rejecting a labor deal. The stoppage is reportedly costing the firm $1 billion per month as the two sides struggle to reach an agreement.
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The strike also brought airplane production at some key Boeing plants—like Seattle, Washington, the state in which half of its nearly 150,000 employees work—to a sudden halt.
Boeing has reportedly lost $25 billion since 2019.
Ortberg was hired over the summer as Boeing tried to repair its public image after a panel on one of its 737 Max planes popped out while in the air in January, terrifying passengers and raising further safety concerns about the 737 Max planes, which have been involved in two crashes.
An investigation after the incident in January performed by the Federal Aviation Administration found that Boeing failed 33 out of 89 product audits.
This week, aviation experts said that the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max crash that killed 156 people in 2019 was caused in part by the company’s failure to pass safety information on to the aircraft’s pilots.
