Boeing is seeking to increase black US employees throughout the company by 20 percent and mandate benchmarks for hiring people of color, Chief Executive Dave Calhoun (right) told employees in a memo on Friday reviewed by Reuters.
US corporations have become more responsive to complaints related to racial equality following a summer of sweeping anti-racism protests over the slaying of black people by police. …
“We understand we have work to do,” Calhoun said in the memo, which was released on the 57th anniversary of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech and included references to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin on Sunday.
Boeing declined to provide its current number of black employees or a timeline for the new target.
The planemaker separately has had to lay off thousands of workers as it grapples with the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and the 17-month-old grounding of the 737 MAX after two fatal crashes.
In the memo, Calhoun said the company would establish an internal Racial Justice think-tank to guide its policies.
Like the Soviet Union had political cadres to watch over everybody who actually knew what they were doing on the job.
On June 23, a manager at Boeing’s Everett factory found “racist symbols” at his work station, according to an email from Commercial Airplanes Chief Executive Stan Deal to employees seen by Reuters. The manager is black, a person familiar with the incident said.
The company launched an internal investigation and referred the matter to police, Deal said, calling the incident “disheartening and a stark reminder of how far our society has to go.”
Uhhhhh …
Nike pledging to boost their employment of blacks by 20% is OK, because who cares about sneaker safety? But doesn’t Boeing make products that we risk our lives riding in?
Must we search out Embraer small airliners because at least Brazil doesn’t play that way?
In truth, the math isn’t that crazy, and they found a way to make the PR statement sound massive rather than marginal. Boeing isn’t going to make 20% of its workforce black. Say Boeing has 4% black employees now and boosts the percentage to 4.8%. You know and I know — although who else knows? — that there aren’t massive numbers of black aeronautical engineers unemployed due to Systemic Racism, so new black hires would be awfully marginal in the capabilities to contribute. But Boeing competes in mostly duopoly markets in which politics matters a lot, so adding 0.8% of the workforce to stand around and be photographed representing the New Diverse Boeing might seem cheap to the CEO.
