Boeing workers to get bonuses

The steady ascent of Boeing Co. shares despite a series of ethics scandals is paying extra dividends for current and former employees, including some in Spokane, who qualified this week for bonus payments worth up to about $900 in stock or cash.

Boeing said Thursday the bonuses will be distributed to more than 200,000 past and present workers by mid-August — the first payouts to be made under an eight-year-old company trust plan.

That includes hundreds of Inland Northwest residents who worked at Boeing’s parts factory in Spokane.

The bonuses kicked in when Boeing’s share price easily topped a predetermined threshold of $44 on Wednesday, one of the plan’s benchmark dates.

Boeing’s stock has been above that level since late May and never dipped below $50 a share throughout Wednesday’s trading session on the New York Stock Exchange. On Thursday, shares sank $1.19, or 2.3 percent, to $49.90.

Since closing at an eight-year low of $25.06 on March 31, 2003, the shares have doubled, finally returning this spring to above where they were at the time of the 2001 terror attacks.

Employees qualify for the full bonus amount if they were with the company throughout the four-year period that ended Wednesday. U.S. employees will receive the bonus in stock, while international employees will get cash.

Although Boeing sold its Spokane factory to Triumph Group Inc. 17 months ago, spokesman Dick Welsh said Boeing’s former workers in Spokane have about 31 months of eligibility that translates to a prorated amount of about $514.

Boeing invested $1 billion in company stock when the trust was created in July 1996, then added $700 million after acquiring Rockwell International and McDonnell Douglas Corp. The plan lasts through June 2010.