More than 2,000 Boeing jobs moving out of Huntington Beach
Boeing will move more than 2,000 jobs from its Huntington Beach facility to other plants, including in Seal Beach, by 2020 as part of a move toward efficiency, the company announced Tuesday.
About 1,600 jobs will be moved to Los Angeles County, 300 will be transferred to Seal Beach and an additional 500 will go to a St. Louis facility, Boeing said in a news release.
Some positions will be transferred to sites in El Segundo, Long Beach and Huntsville, Ala.
The transfers will occur slowly over the four-year period, spokeswoman Tiffany Pitts said.
“In order to push ourselves farther and win more business, we need to make the most of our resources and talent,” said Leanne Caret, president and chief executive of the company’s Defense, Space and Security unit. “These steps will help us be a stronger partner for our customers worldwide.”
Boeing is one of the largest employers in Huntington Beach.
The facility, which currently has about 5,000 employees, will continue to operate after the transfers.
Pitts said most people who are working in the Huntington Beach facility now will transfer while others will be laid off.
As part of the plan, Boeing will scale down many of its facilities, including the Huntington Beach site, by a total of 4.5 million square feet.
Several positions in Kent, Wash., will be moved to a nearby plant in Tukwila. Facilities in El Paso, Texas, and Newington, Va., will be closed.
The site where the Huntington Beach facility sits was once the home of aerospace company McDonnell Douglas. That plant helped build the Saturn V rocket that astronauts flew to the moon.
Boeing purchased McDonnell Douglas in 1997.
According to Boeing, some of America’s most important space vehicles and platforms were developed on the site, including NASA space shuttles and the Delta rockets used by the military.
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