The latest round of furloughs related to Boeing’s ongoing machinists’s strike isn’t at Boeing (BA). Reuters reports that Spirit Aerosystems (SPR), a fuselage supplier, is the one sending workers home.
“These furloughs are necessary as we’ve run out of storage space for 767 and 777,” Spirit spokesperson Joe Buccino told the newswire. The company reportedly plans to furloughs around 700 workers for 21 days.
It’s slightly ironic, given the context of Spirit’s relationship to Boeing. For a long time it was a Boeing subsidiary, but then the planemaker spun it out in 2005 before reacquiring it earlier this year for $8.3 billion. The deal came about in the wake of Boeing’s door plug blowout crisis, at which Spirit was the center.
After their split, the two companies continued working together. But in the last few years Boeing attempted to get around Spirit production delays by leaning on s0-called “traveled work,” where unfinished planes would be moved further along in the production process and work would continue out of step. Regulators believe that the practice led to a piece of fuselage used to cover unused emergency exit door openings to fall off a 737 Max 9 mid-flight this January.
Former Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun, who helped negotiate Spirit’s re-acquisition, said cutting down on traveled work was central to that deal. But now that Boeing has been struggling to reach a deal with its striking machinists for more than a month, Spirit’s output doesn’t have anywhere to travel to.
In addition to layoffs at Boeing (10% of its workforce, the company says) and furloughs that it has announced for its own workers, it seems like companies that make their business upstream from its operations will begin feeling some pain as well.
