The announcement of furloughs for 900 employees at the Spirit Aerosystems Holdings headquarters in Wichita, Kansas means some will lose their jobs at the company’s operations in Oklahoma.
The furlough will be a 21-day layoff for those employees doing production and support work for Boeing Co’s 737 program.
A WARN notice sent to the Oklahoma Office of Workforce Development indicated Spirit will “declare an immediate reduction of the hourly workforce” in Tulsa and McAlester, Oklahoma. However, details of the layoffs in Oklahoma were not made available.
Spirit makes the 737 fuselage and said the temporary layoffs and furloughs of about 900 workers in Kansas would be effective June 15. The company cited the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the uncertainty of the 737 MAX’s return to serve following fatal crashes.
Spirit’s announcement comes two weeks after Boeing said it resumed production of the 737 MAX, with a goal of handing jets over to airlines in the third quarter.
The 737 MAX has been grounded since March 2019 after two fatal crashes killed 346 people.
It was early May when Spirit AeroSystems announced the layoff of 1,450 employees at its Wichita plant amid the reduced demand for commercial airplanes.
Just two years ago, Spirit unveiled its second center of excellence focusing on the fabrication of complex commercial and military aircraft parts. The facility is at the company’s site in McAlester and at the time, Spirit President and CEO Tom Gentile. “Rather than moving work to Mexico, we imported 18 new machines from a shop in Juarez, Mexico. We began producing parts for customers in McAlester last year (2017), and the site has capacity to bring in more machines as demand increases.”
The same year, Spirit expanded its operations in Tulsa by hiring nearly 250 employees and investing more than $80 million in capital projects to support fuselage manufacturing and assembly work.
The multi-year expansion project, which began in 2019, was achieved in partnership with the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW). The state of Oklahoma and City of Tulsa offered incentives to help secure the work statement in Tulsa with support from the Tulsa Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Source: Reuters/Workforce Development