'I Want To Ask You About Whistleblowers...': Marsha Blackburn Grills Boeing's CEO

2 days ago

During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Sen. Marsha Balckburn (R-TN) questioned Boeing's President and CEO Kelly Ortberg about whistleblower protections, and safety improvements.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you for being with us today. I think that listening to this today it made me think of

00:07Secretary Duffy's remarks that it was time for you all to have some tough love and I agree with

00:15that and I appreciate the conversation around how dedicated you are to addressing a comprehensive

00:23safety plan. That is important and I want to talk with you about what you're doing to

00:31improve your company's culture and that work culture. This is a very important part of any

00:40business. It appears that your company work culture has been frayed so very quickly what are you

00:51personally doing to change this work culture at Boeing? Senator, the first thing I'm doing is

00:59leading by example and getting our people closer to the people doing the design and the production

01:06of the airplane. So tomorrow I'll be in St. Louis with the people that are manufacturing military

01:13airplanes on the floor. Next week I'll be in Everett, Washington with our wide-body team

01:20talking to union members about the difficulties that they're having in manufacturing the aircraft

01:25and what we need to do to help them be successful. So that's the first step in changing the culture

01:31is getting people to recognize that leadership's role is to help the organization be successful,

01:39not to make themselves successful. So we've got a lot of activity in underway to do that.

01:46How are your employees responding to that? Very positively, very positively. We just did an all

01:52employee survey which is a means that I'm going to use to measure the culture change and we have

01:58that survey structured so I can look at any place in the organization. Okay, then let me do this.

02:04I want to ask you about whistleblowers. Okay. Because we've heard from some of the Boeing

02:10whistleblowers and I know you're familiar with their names but you don't have a good record

02:17of protecting and supporting whistleblowers and some of the stories around these whistleblowers

02:24has been very upsetting to people like me who have worked through my public service to protect

02:32whistleblowers. I think that they're essential. So talk to me about what you're doing to change

02:38that policy to support and not to ostracize or isolate whistleblowers. Senator, the company has

02:47an anti-retaliation policy. It's unacceptable for anybody to retaliate against whether it's

02:53a whistleblower or anybody bringing up a quality issue and I've made that perfectly clear in all of

03:00our all employee meetings, all employee sessions. In fact, I've told employees if they have an issue

03:07send me a note. I'll address it and some have sent me a note. I've met with the whistleblower,

03:13one of the whistleblowers. My door is open to discuss with any of the whistleblowers what

03:19they're seeing and make sure that there is no retaliation in the organization but this is a

03:25part of the culture change within the company. Not to interrupt but I want to ask you,

03:31are you stepping back to some of those whistleblowers who have experienced a less

03:39than positive relationship? Are you righting those wrongs? Senator, in many cases the whistleblowers

03:47that I'm aware of, those activities happened a long time ago. Some of those are still with

03:54the company and I've met with one of the whistleblowers with the company so I know that

04:00in the past all the retaliation claims have been thoroughly investigated and if there's

04:07retaliation there's been corrective action taken. Okay, let me move on. Comac. I think we're all

04:14concerned about Comac and the Chinese Communist Party and the CEO of Ryanair recently said they

04:21were opening, open to buying planes from Comac. We're all concerned about competition that would

04:29come from China and the Chinese Communist Party. So what steps are you taking to innovate and to

04:38make certain that you are competing and out-competing our foreign competitors?

04:47Senator, Comac is a competitor. We also have a much bigger competitor in Europe that we

04:54compete with on a regular basis in all of our markets. We have to stay competitive. We have to

05:00invest in the future of our company. We're investing in new versions of the MAX aircraft.

05:06We're investing in the new largest wide-body airplane, dual-engine airplane in the history

05:14with our 777X program and all those airplane investments are about staying ahead of the

05:21competition and making sure that that we can compete in a global market. Thank you.

'I Want To Ask You About Whistleblowers...': Marsha Blackburn Grills Boeing's CEO

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