Boeing said it would shift as many as 1,400 of the jobs to San Antonio, Oklahoma City or the Seattle area, by either transferring workers from Wichita or hiring others. It said it would eliminate the rest of the jobs.
The layoffs, to start in the third quarter of this year, represent the latest of several job cuts and plant closings by military contractors. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is expected to discuss how the Pentagon plans to adjust its war strategies and weapons programs to save at least $450 billion over the next 10 years.
The job cuts could also prompt a political furor in some states, particularly in a presidential election year. Politicians in Kansas expressed anger Wednesday about Boeing’s move, calling it a betrayal of promises the company made last year when they helped it win a $35 billion Air Force contract for aerial refueling tankers.
Boeing said then that it would finish assembling the giant refueling planes in Wichita, creating several hundred jobs.
Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, said on Wednesday that he was “outraged” that Boeing was moving that work to Washington State.
“It is hard to believe that conditions would have changed so rapidly over the past few months to bring about the decision to not only move the tanker finishing work elsewhere, but to also close down the entire facility,” he said. “The fact that Boeing is now refusing to honor its commitment to the people of Kansas is greatly troubling to me and to thousands of Kansans who trusted that Boeing’s promise would be kept.”
Mark Bass, a vice president for a division in Boeing’s military business, told reporters on Wednesday that the plant, which Boeing has run for 80 years, was too large and inefficient to be competitive as the Pentagon cut costs.
He said other contracts for modifying and maintaining military aircraft were winding down, and a Boeing study concluded in November that the plant’s business “would continue to erode.”
He said the plant had 97 buildings and stretched across two million square feet, but it must compete for maintenance work with smaller companies operating out of two aircraft hangars.
Boeing maintains the president’s planes, known as Air Force One, at the Wichita plant. Company officials said some of the modification contracts, for airborne command and logistics-support planes, were ending, and plans for updating B-52 bombers had not materialized as expected.
Mr. Bass said labor costs at the plant were higher than at rival sites.
Boeing will move the engineering and project management work to its plant in Oklahoma City, adding 800 jobs there, he said. The modification and maintenance work will shift to San Antonio, adding 300 to 400 jobs there. And 200 jobs related to the tanker project will be moved to Washington, he said.
Boeing’s decision was a major setback for Wichita, which has long been an aviation center. Boeing spun off work on its commercial planes there in 2005, and the new company, Spirit AeroSystems, supplies sections for Boeing jets. Other plane makers, like Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft, are based in Wichita.
Boeing has laid off workers in other states over the last several years. The total work force in its military business has dropped to 63,000 from 71,000 at the start of 2009. Other military contractors have cut thousands of workers through buyouts and layoffs.
Boeing officials said they could not specify Wednesday how many of the cuts had been made in response to cancellations or delays in weapons programs. They said some of the employees had been transferred to the company’s commercial-plane business, which has rebounded from the recession.
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