Planemaker to Bolster Engineering and Manufacturing Staffs

Seeking to simplify its much-impugned corporate structure, Boeing, the aerospace giant and builder of iconic, world-changing aircraft such as the 707, 747, 777, B-52 Stratofortress, and F-18 Super Hornet, is making ready to slash some two-thousand jobs in its finance and human resources divisions. The job cuts will be realized by dint of a combination of planned attrition and layoffs.

To the subject of layoffs, a Boeing spokesperson stated: "We have and will continue to communicate transparently with our teams that we expect lower staffing within some corporate support functions so that we can focus our resources in engineering and manufacturing and directly supporting our products, services and technology development efforts.”

Approximately one third of the cut jobs will be outsourced to India’s Tata Consulting Services.

In January 2023, Boeing set forth that it intended “to hire around ten-thousand employees with a focus within our business units and in engineering and manufacturing as we look to further stabilize operations, increase production and invest in innovation.”

Data available on Boeing’s website at the end of 2022 showed Boeing’s workforce totaled over 156,000. The figure reflects a roughly 15,000 increase that, according to a Boeing spokesperson, was "driven by significant hiring in engineering and manufacturing."

Boeing spokesman Mike Friedman remarked: "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."

Amidst the extensive and protracted fallout of the 737 MAX debacle came observations from aerospace industry pundits and federal regulators that Boeing, formerly a business built on engineering and manufacturing, had gradually metamorphosed into a business built on finance and outsourcing.

During Boeing’s mid-twentieth-century golden era, the company’s board and executives predicated major decisions upon the input of engineers the likes of Joe Sutter, who oversaw the design and development of the 747; Thornton Wilson, who designed the B-47, B-52, and Minuteman missile; and Ed Wells, George Schairer, and John Alexander, who conceptualized and helped design the 707. The 1990s—particularly the late ‘90s, following the successful launch of the 777—saw Boeing’s corporate ethos shift from spars, rivets, and bulkheads to spreadsheets, return on investment, and blockchains.

Prior to the 737 MAX’s certification, Boeing engineers vehemently and repeatedly warned company brass that the inchoate aircraft’s flight-control system lacked sufficient safeguards. Senior Boeing engineer Curtis Ewbank went so far as to file an internal ethics complaint in which he alleged that during the 737 MAX’s development, Boeing’s upper management—for purpose of minimizing costs—had rejected the inclusion of a flight-control safety system that, in Ewbank’s considered opinion, would have addressed the design flaws to which two infamously deadly 2019 737 MAX accidents have since been ascribed.

In addition to filing the aforementioned ethics complaint, Mr. Ewbank lodged a formal complaint excoriating then Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg for publicly misrepresenting the 737 MAX’s inherent safety.

In point of fact, numerous current and former Boeing employees have outlined instances in which managers dismissed engineers’ recommendations or prioritized profit over sound design and passenger safety. Many such employees, citing feelings of frustration and personal accountability, have made public formerly private discussions of problems with the 737 MAX’s design and the bottom-line-focused decision-making process by which the jet’s development was characterized.

FMI: www.boeing.com