149 face layoffs at booming Boeing

By Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter

With the airplane business booming, Boeing has added airplane engineers and production workers at a fast clip since mid-2004.

But Friday, 149 senior information-technology staff members received 60-day layoff notices.

The airplane manufacturer is outsourcing their work to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) of El Segundo, Calif.

The people facing layoff are systems analysts, including administrators and design and integration specialists, mostly long-serving and nonunion professional staff.

Of the total, 123 are Puget Sound region employees. The rest are scattered around the U.S.

Boeing spokeswoman Cathy Rudolph said, "We have a very large IT population. We're always studying where does it make sense to do that work."

Rudolph added, "There is no overarching strategy to outsource large portions of IT work."

Some of the affected staff may find other positions within Boeing, while others have the option to be hired by CSC, Rudolph said.

An employee in the affected unit, Computer and Network Operations (CNO), said in an e-mail that CSC will have a job fair at Boeing this week.

Rudolph declined to comment on whether anyone moving from Boeing to CSC would see a significant difference in salary.

In 2003, CSC took over computer-systems monitoring, support and administration at Boeing's defense unit. CSC will now take over that role throughout Boeing

The company also bid to take over Boeing's mainframe operations, but according to the CNO employee, the bid came in higher than the in-house operation.

Rudolph confirmed this work will be kept within Boeing.

She said the outsourced work is "in line with CSC's core business." However, she said that doesn't mean Boeing intends to outsource more IT work.

CNO is headed by Boeing Vice President Radha Radhakrishnan, who has been discussing a restructuring of the unit internally for more than a year, Rudolph said.

Radhakrishnan sent a memo to all CNO employees last month saying that "the CNO Leadership Team has been working over the last four months to 'Paint the Future' of this organization," adding that the outsourcing would "achieve significant savings."

Radhakrishnan previously headed IT at Boeing's Satellite unit in El Segundo and is based in Seal Beach, Southern California.

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com