Boeing Co. has joined a new coalition lobbying to preserve $8.7 billion in tax breaks that Washington state gave its aerospace industry in 2013, the group said.

The organization, launched on Tuesday, indicates growing opposition to changing the incentives, and aims to counter efforts by some state lawmakers to tie the tax breaks to employment in the state, Maud Daudon, chief executive officer of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview.

Several "claw-back" measures have been proposed since the tax breaks were approved in 2013, but did not pass.

"Our expectation is something like that may surface again" in the legislative session that started Monday, Daudon said.

She said the group will be a "megaphone" to spread the message that aerospace jobs in Washington state are at risk.

"We are in a competition to keep them here," she said. "Any state in the country would die to get these jobs."