Boeing Says It Fired 65 Workers for Hateful Words or Actions

Boeing Co. has fired 65 employees and disciplined another 53 for racist, discriminatory and hateful conduct since Chief Executive Officer Dave Calhoun vowed “zero tolerance” in June.

The CEO is trying to make good on an anti-bigotry pledge he made last year after George Floyd’s murder by a police officer spurred protests across the U.S. Now, in a bid for greater transparency, Boeing is releasing a breakdown of its employees by gender, race and ethnicity -- and the report shows that the company has a long way to go to attain its goal of a more diverse workforce.
“As we have witnessed horrific images in the news and heard heartbreaking stories from our people, our determination to advance equity, diversity and inclusion has only become stronger,” Calhoun told employees Friday.
Boeing is working to bolster inclusion as investors press U.S. companies to help address deep-seated racism and to be more transparent about their own hiring practices. McDonald’s Corp. is tying executive bonuses to targets for increasing underrepresented groups. Investor proposals for independent racial audits were backed by more than one-third of Johnson & Johnson and Citigroup Inc. shareholders at annual meetings this month.

First Look
Boeing is sharing U.S. employee ethnic and racial data for the first time

While Calhoun tries to reboot the company culture, Boeing is being sued for racial discrimination. According to allegations in a recent case in federal court in South Carolina, a Black employee faced retaliation and a hostile work environment, as well as a supervisor who routinely assigned African-American workers to a building with undesirable and hazardous working conditions. Boeing denies the allegations.

One of Calhoun’s first hires after taking the top job last year was Michael D’Ambrose as human resources chief, with a mandate to bolster diversity. According to Boeing’s demographic data released Friday, a company that has traditionally skewed White and male has a lot of work ahead to add more women and people of color to its ranks.

Black employees make up just 6.4% of Boeing’s U.S. workforce and 4.4% of its engineers. Women account for 23% of employees and 17% of engineers.

“We’re on par with the aerospace industry, and we don’t think that’s anywhere good enough,” D’Ambrose said in an interview. (Bloomberg article but will not let me link it)