Boeing lays off up to 180 at engineering unit

NEW DELHI: Boeing has laid off up to 180 employees at the Boeing India Engineering Technology Center (BIETC) in Bengaluru as part of the global downsizing being undertaken by the troubled American aerospace major. Boeing senior VP & president of Boeing Global, Dr Brendan Nelson, has confirmed this to TOI.

“We are right sizing the company. As part of that, 150-180 Boeing employees in India (have been laid off),” he said. It is learnt that of the 7,000 employees Boeing in India, almost 6,500 are at BIETC in Bengaluru and Chennai. The centres in these two metros “undertake complex advanced aerospace work and support Boeing’s global engineering growth,” says the company’s website. Boeing’s wholly owned engineering and technology campus in Bengaluru, one of the largest Boeing investments outside the US, had opened in Jan 2024.

"The numbers are around 150 to 180. So I'm being honest with you. None of the positions that we've removed impact in any way on the customers, or on the government. So what I'd say are some of the areas of support. But at the same time, we're still growing because we're growing in areas where we have statements of work and a capability we need. Where we need to grow. So some positions have gone, other positions have come in, and we will continue to grow in India. So in some other countries throughout the world, we've had proportionately more reductions than in others. But we've been very careful to make sure that what we do in India has been extremely strategic. And anything that has had an adverse impact on customers, safety, quality, we haven't touched any people at work that's going to have an adverse impact on those,” Nelson said.

“Because we're downsizing, our total workforce (globally comprising 47 nationalities) is going to 162,000. About 15% of our workforce is outside the United States, which has the largest number of employees. So we've got about 24,000 employees outside the US and more than a quarter of those are in India. We've got 7,000 Indian employees here in the country and this is the biggest footprint that we have outside the US,” Nelson, a former politician who was Australia’s defence minister about two decades back, said, adding, “Combining the 7,000 employees with our about 320 supply chain partners, the total employee count in India is 14,000.”

“The company overall downsized 10%. So that's about 17,000 employees across the entire company that have worked very hard. And the reason for that is because we've got to have the right size for the company, to make sure it's consistent with the financial and economic challenges that we face as we come out of that. There has been a reduction in the Indian workforce,” Nelson said.

Boeing says India is key to its revival plans and that sourcing from here will increase as aircraft production goes up — something that airline customers like Air India Group and Akasa are keenly awaiting as they are not getting planes at the promised pace. As production picks up pace, the headcount may hopefully go up again. Kelly Ortberg, who took over as Boeing president & CEO last August when the company was in a freefall, has set “execution of delivery; of stabilising the company, whether it’s the balance sheet or the production lines, and then thinking about the future” as his priorities while ensuring safety.

“In our very first meeting (with Ortberg), he said, ‘Brendan, I need to go and see what we're doing outside the US’,” Nelson said, who asked him to visit India among the first three countries, with the other two being Australia and Japan. Ortberg was in India on his first overseas trip as Boeing president. “That is a reflection of his commitment to globalising our company and to India specifically. And I said to him after we'd finished the trip in relation to India, ‘is there anything that you're concerned about, anything you think we should be doing, that we're not doing?’ He was most impressed with everything he saw in India, especially the people and the quality & the complexity of the work being done here,” he said.

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