Boeing to Lay Off More than 12K Americans While Expanding in India

The Boeing Company is set to lay off more than 12,000 Americans in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus crisis while planning an expansion in India.

On Wednesday, Boeing executives announced their plans to cut more than 12,000 American jobs over the next few months — including 5,520 voluntary layoffs and 6,770 involuntary layoffs set for the next three weeks.

At the same time, Boeing India executives say they are planning for a major expansion:

“Over the next couple of years, we expect Boeing’s India presence to be the largest outside of the US. Boeing has been a proud partner with India for more than 75 years, and we’re just getting started. We want to contribute to the growth of India’s aerospace industry. That’s why we’re investing in commercial and defence across the development of aerospace technology, innovation, production capacity, supply chain, aerospace skilling centres, manufacturing and the modernisation of airport infrastructure and airspace,” Boeing India president Salil Gupte told [Times of India]. [Emphasis added]

…

“We have been working towards skilling and upskilling Indian MSMEs as we’ve quadrupled our sourcing here from $250 million to $1 billion over the past few years. With thousands of MSMEs now getting into the aerospace sector, there is opportunity to do more,” Gupte added. [Emphasis added]

For years, Boeing has increasingly outsourced and offshored to India.

In the coming years, Boeing India executives say the corporation’s new Bengaluru, India, campus will get a $200 million boost and will be the largest Boeing facility outside the U.S. Simultaneously, Boeing employment in Washington state, alone, has been cut by more than 12,000 since 2013.

Boeing has had contracts with Indian firms HCL Technologies Ltd. and Tata Consulting Services (TCS), two of the largest H-1B visa IT outsourcers in the country.

The corporation’s work with HCL Technologies Ltd. outsourced American engineering jobs to H-1B foreign visa workers for sometimes as little as $9 an hour, according to various reports.

Boeing profits hugely from American taxpayer money. In 2017, the company noted that about 79 percent of its profits came from government contracts with the U.S. federal government. In 2018, Boeing saved $230 million in taxes thanks to tax breaks offered by Washington state.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.