Boeing Pays Millions in Wages After in Washington Investigation

A Washington wage complaint investigation resulted in The Boeing Co. paying $11.5 million in unpaid wages to nearly 500 workers.

The Washington State Department of Labor & Industries reports receiving four complaints in November 2022 from workers who were performing aircraft maintenance overseas for Boeing. From there, it expanded to a broader investigation into travel pay and policies for workers in Washington State.

State law requires companies to pay workers for time spent on mandatory travel and on-the-job related activities while on a required work trip. Employers also owe overtime and sick leave accrual based on those hours.

L&I and Boeing signed a compliance agreement on May 24 acknowledging payments totaling $11,538,550.56 to 495 Boeing employees.

In the agreement, Boeing said it started revising the pay practices after a September 2021 Court of Appeals case, Port of Tacoma v. Sacks, a case that affirmed L&I’s position on compensating workers for out-of-town business travel. Unlike federal wage and hour law, which excludes certain travel time, all travel time related to work is considered work time under Washington law.

L&I found Boeing had not paid or accounted for all overtime and for paid sick leave for the additional time going to worksites while out of town. During the course of L&I’s investigation, Boeing agreed to pay the workers who filed initial complaints and the larger group impacted by travel work policies at the company. The total includes wages and overtime for travel between October 2019 and August 2023. Individual workers received amounts ranging from a few hundred dollars to more than $90,000.

Additional terms in the agreement spell out conditions intended to ensure the issue doesn’t happen again, including Boeing committing to following the law related to travel work pay in the future and the company has developed a process to investigate if additional wages are owed.

According to L&I, the Boeing case is the largest amount of back pay returned to workers in the agency’s history. The previous largest case involved Hertz and Thrifty car rental companies. In a 2017 agreement with the agency, the companies paid nearly $2 million in back wages to 157 workers.

Topics Aviation Washington Aerospace