WASHINGTON, March 30 (UPI) -- Boeing will cut some 4,000 jobs -- about 2 percent of its global staff -- by June to reduce costs, and could cut an additional 4,000 jobs by the end of the year.
The aircraft maker said it would cut jobs through retirement, resignation, voluntary buyouts and by not hiring employees for unfilled positions.
"We'll only use involuntary layoffs as a last resort," Boeing spokesman Doug Adler told CNN Money. Boeing has cut more than 13,000 jobs since 2012.
The Seattle Times reports Boeing's Test & Evaluation division could target an overall workforce reduction of 10 percent, which could mean an additional 4,000 jobs would be lost. Boeing said if necessary savings cannot be found elsewhere, then it will lay people off later this year.
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Boeing President Raymond Conner said the company drastically needs to reduce costs due to sales competition from Airbus.
"Their biggest weapon that they're using in the competitions today is price," Conner told employees through a webcast. "They are attacking us with price in every single campaign. And as a result of that, you know, we're being pushed to the wall."
Last year, Airbus had more orders than Boeing -- 1,007 to 568 -- but Airbus has not delivered as many planes as Boeing. In 2015 through November, Boeing delivered 709 planes while Airbus delivered 556. Boeing nearly met its 2015 production targets but Airbus fell short of production goals by dozens of planes.
"Boeing's actually a little bit ahead," Richard Aboulafia, the vice president for analysis at the Teal Group aerospace and defense intelligence firm, previously told Fortune. "The idea of looking at any one year -- it's fun for bragging rights but otherwise it's completely meaningless when you've got an industry with 12,000 jets on backlog. What you've got is a situation where Airbus is a little ahead in number of tails, but Boeing is slightly ahead in value. Airbus has a better position in the narrow-body market, Boeing is ahead in wide-body, and together it works out to be about 50-50."
