Boeing redeploys workers as 737 MAX production in Renton prepares to shut down

About a dozen partially completed 737 MAX airplanes currently inside Boeing’s Renton plant will be finished before production comes to a complete stop in mid-January, the company told employees in an internal email message Monday.

Meanwhile, some Boeing workers will be deployed either locally or as far as Victorville, Calif., to maintain the hundreds of MAX jets idled by the grounding, or to do other work.

Beginning this week, approximately 3,000 workers — those directly involved in manufacturing, engineering and parts fabrication — will be temporarily reassigned, the message states. Most of those affected are at the Renton site, where a total of some 12,000 people are based. Some workers at Boeing fabrication plants in Auburn and also in South Carolina will also be reassigned.

The first wave of reassignment notices went out to employees Monday, informing some workers on the 737 jet program in the Puget Sound region that they will be temporarily transferred to the 767 and 777 programs in Everett.