By Scott Hamilton

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg is working to improve the company’s culture. Credit: Boeing.

April 22, 2025, © Leeham News: Boeing released an employee survey last week about safety, culture, and related items. Some areas recorded improvements, while others recorded declines.

But the survey data released did not address a serious problem Boeing has had for more than two decades and continues to have, despite efforts to improve safety, quality and culture: the “deep state” that exists within Boeing at the middle- and lower-officer levels that continue to practice intimidation and retaliation against some who attempt to point out problems in the areas listed above.

In interviews for LNA and my forthcoming book, The Rise and Fall of Boeing and the Way Back, it was clear that Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg’s initial rounds of housecleaning at the executive and some lower levels haven’t scratched the surface of the root of the company’s problems that have brought this icon to its proverbial knees.

Rise and Fall is essentially a sequel to my first book, Air Wars, The Global Combat Between Airbus and Boeing, published in September 2021. Rise and Fall is in final copy editing, with a target publishing date in September, the fourth anniversary of Air Wars’ publication.

Boeing’s release of its recent survey last week presents a contrast in contradictions.

Survey results

Boeing detailed the following. The results indicate Boeing has a lot of work to do with its employees.

• More than 82% of employees participated, the highest response of any Boeing employee survey since 2016.
• 67% feel proud to work at Boeing, compared to 91% in 2013.
• 27% would highly recommend Boeing as place to work – and at the same time employees remain committed to turning the company around: More than 92% of employees said they plan to stay for more than a year.

• 54% of employees felt inspired by the previous Boeing values, and most believe the company should do a better job of living those values and holding each other accountable.
• 75% of employees believe their direct managers are effective, but only 61% of employees feel their contributions are valued and recognized.
• 42% have confidence in their senior leader’s ability to make decisions, communicate direction and respond to concerns raised by employees.

“Our Culture Working Group helped shape these new values and behaviors,” Boeing said in an email.

• The group includes 40 employees from US and international teams, business units (Boeing Commercial Airplanes; Boeing Defense, Space & Security; and Boeing Global Services), and in a range of functions, roles and key demographics. 25% (10 people) in this group are based in the [Seattle] region. They include employees and managers on teams for production, engineering and other work at Boeing sites in Renton and Everett (including final assembly) and also in Seattle, Tukwila and Auburn.

• Half of the group are individual contributors and half are non-executive managers.
• The Culture Working Group gave valuable feedback; for example, they felt that including the behavior to “give a damn!” was important and encouraged Ortberg to include it.

Ortberg’s message

In a message to employees released concurrently with the survey results, CEO Ortberg wrote, “Changing our culture starts with each of us. It’s the most important work we can do to restore trust and turn our company around – and no one is more committed to this than our own team.

“One of the most important steps we are taking is defining a new set of values and behaviors that will guide us. We started by asking every employee to share vital feedback through our first employee survey in nearly six years. Our leaders listened and we formed a working group made up of your peers from across the company.

“With help from our Culture Working Group, we quickly got to work and used your ideas to shape what our new values and behaviors would be.”

“Culture change will take time and it’s only possible if every one of us lives these values and embraces these behaviors,” Ortberg continued. “We can start today with leadership listening to their teams, understanding their challenges and making it easier for people to do their jobs. We need everyone from our factory floors to our engineering labs to continue sharing ideas and speaking up. I’ve asked my leaders and your managers to do the same, and together, we will hold each other accountable.

“This is a fundamental shift to get us back to an iconic culture that once defined Boeing as an aerospace leader. Now let’s work together to live our values and behaviors, uphold them, and return Boeing to the company that we all know we can be,” Ortberg said.

Credit: Boeing.

Our interviews

As I interviewed people for LNA and Rise and Fall, a picture emerged that despite efforts by former CEOs Dennis Muilenburg and David Calhoun to improve safety, quality control and the culture, roadblocks continue. Boeing repeatedly touted improvements in its Speak Up program, a process designed to encourage employees to report problems and make suggestions without fear of retribution or intimidation. But such still exists. Airbus has a similar program that appears to have stricter protocols for protecting the reporting employees.

Furthermore, Boeing’s efforts to report improvements are devoid of detail. Two days before the one year anniversary of the Alaska accident, Boeing issued a press release touting all it had achieved in improving safety since that scary day. Simultaneously, it continued to stonewall the engineers union, SPEEA, in a safety initiative that was by now almost a year old. Among the items Boeing listed were:

• Addressed over 70% of action items in commercial airplanes production based on employee feedback during Quality Stand Down sessions.
• Instituted new random quality audits of documented removals in high frequency areas to ensure compliance to process.
• Added hundreds of hours of new curriculum to training programs, including quality proficiency, Safety Management System (SMS) Positive Safety Culture, and critical skills.
• Mapped and prepared thousands of governance documents and work instructions for revision.
• Significantly reduced defects in 737 fuselage assembly at Spirit AeroSystems by increasing inspection points at build locations and implementing customer quality approval process.

However, the company didn’t detail data to support the claims. For example, in “addressing 70% of action items,” there was no definition of what this meant. How many items had actions that implemented the suggestions? How many were rejected? Were some merely “addressed” with a kind of form letter, as one employee interviewed last week told me? Boeing initially told reporters there would be a briefing, then canceled this event. It also declined to make anyone available to answer questions and corporate communications did not respond to specific questions I posed as the editor of Leeham News.

Intimidation and Resignation

The larger problem facing Ortberg and Boeing is changing the culture. Ortberg has made a few key executive changes and a few within BCA’s middle management ranks. Efforts under Muilenburg and Calhoun to improve the culture and encourage rank-and-file employees to speak up without fear of retaliation or retribution, appeared to be well short of success when the Alaska Airlines flight 1282 door plug blow out happened. Employees of the engineers and touch-labor unions made it clear that retribution was still feared. Formal complaints were filed alleging such.

A former Boeing employee whose assignment was safety education within the company. He quit earlier this year. He was frustrated that mid-level managers and executives rarely attended meetings for more than introductory remarks. Lower level employees often left before the classes were completed, citing work requirements. The employee brought his concerns to his managers, who dismissed them. The employee filed a Speak Up report and received a form letter-type response.

He considered becoming a whistleblower with the Federal Aviation Administration, Washington Senator Maria Cantwell and Washington Congressman Adam Smith—two members of Congress who have been highly critical of Boeing despite being from the Commercial Airplanes division home state. But this employee remains afraid of retribution.

“I guarantee you that they’ll circle the wagons and try to discredit me as being a disgruntled employee. I am a disgruntled employee. I was furloughed and flattened. I was threatened with layoffs and laughed at. I was cussed out,” he said. “That was my experience in just the first few months. It wasn’t until the team got toxic that I said, I’ve had enough.”

SPEEA remains frustrated

Rich Plunkett, the director of strategic development for SPEEA, is the lead liaison between the union and Boeing. He’s expressed continuing frustration with Boeing over union safety initiatives. Among the complaints: Boeing’s labor relations department, not its safety department, is negotiating for the company. Months have gone by with no meetings. Company negotiators insisted that Boeing be the arbitrator over what safety complaints would be heard by a special committee proposed by SPEEA, which could include a member from the Federal Aviation Administration.

In contrast, Spirit AeroSystems, at the time Boeing’s leading outside supplier (it made the fuselage for the 737 and nose sections for the other Boeing commercial airliners), cooperatively and quickly adopted the same program and process SPEEA proposed to Boeing.

When Ortberg first joined Boeing, he quickly met with the leadership of IAM 751, the union that assembles the airliners in the Renton and Everett factories, and which represents employees are several other Boeing production sites. The company and this union were engaged in contract negotiations, as recounted in previous chapters. Ortberg had a “fire” to put out before the “house” burned down. So, a meeting with SPEEA leadership didn’t happen until February 7.

Plunkett said the meeting was friendly. “It was a nice enough social event,” he told me a few months later. “But nothing came of it. We brought forth a number of items, particularly around the layoffs.” Increasing use of contract labor was another topic SPEEA brought up in the Ortberg meeting. Union leaders also routinely request data from Boeing for negotiations, ideas, and related issues. “We can’t even get data from Boeing,” Plunkett complained. “They fight us on data.”

Contract employees

Plunkett said the 10% layoffs ordered by Ortberg upon his arrival to cut costs in some cases amount to shuffling between employees and contractors.

“Boeing now contracts with Monument Consulting LLC, who in turn goes to contract houses to get contingent labor for Boeing,” Plunkett said. “To indemnify the employer, H-1B visas, for example, Boeing can use these people till the cows come home. And Boeing will never be H-1B dependent because they’re not employing these people, even indirectly, because they’re going through Monument.”

SPEEA’s labor contract expires next fall, so Ortberg’s attention may be focused on more pressing issues. But Plunkett and the SPEEA leadership remains frustrated on the impasses with Boeing’s labor relations department over the ASAP/Speak Up program and other issues it believes merit quicker attention.

“We gave Kelly an opportunity, and we’re just not seeing it happen fast enough,” he said.