Emil McLeod
The aerospace and military monopoly Boeing has announced that it will layoff more than 3,500 workers across its plants in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, and South Carolina amid continuing declining profits. The proposed layoffs would amount to cutting approximately 17,000 jobs, or around 10% of Boeing’s worldwide workforce. Boeing began sending out Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications (WARNs) this month, with more expected in December. The looming mass layoffs, and the threat of a second round of layoffs, saw Boeing’s shares jump by 2.6%, reflecting a boost in confidence from capitalist investors.
According to the aerospace consulting firm, Leeham News and Analysis, Boeing’s mass layoffs are an attempt to offset the financial losses that it incurred during the most recent strike by IAM workers, which cost the company between $50 million and $150 million per day, and over $6 billion in the third quarter alone. However, Boeing is going through with its original plan despite the IAM workers returning to the production line; in fact, Boeing has been hit hard by the capitalist economic crisis for years and is following a general trend of layoffs across industries and across various imperialist countries.
Boeing has sold off billions of dollars of stock and recently struck a $10 billion credit agreement with the banking monopoly Citibank and is seeking a supplemental pool of capital to reinvest into production, hedging their bets that this will assist them in jumpstarting production of their 737 airliner, one of their bestselling commercial aircrafts. Boeing has previously stated that they will employ tactics of work speed up on workers on the production line to meet quotas and to reinvigorate supply chains, and has already been inflicting breakneck work tempos on the workers. The Federal Aviation Administration had capped production of the 737 at 38 planes per month, which Boeing was not even able to reach before the machinists’ strike halted production.
As the U.S.-Zionist genocidal wars continue, Boeing, as the country’s dominant military and aerospace monopoly, continues to be to be a key supplier of weapons to Israel, supplying almost 60% of missiles purchased over the past two years, and recently signed a multi-billion dollar deal to supply Israel with F-15 fighter jets throughout the next decade.
Photo: Boeing 737 Max.
