Boeing terrorizes employees over missing ‘inappropriate parts’ on production floor: Whistleblower

When I picture a nightmare work environment, I think of a surreal all-hands meeting where Auric Golden Finger tells his entire company that they will irradiate Fort Knox with weapons of mass destruction. Boeing South Carolina isn’t the first place you think of. However, John Barnett’s account details a workplace where supervisors harassed employees in violation of the law to meet Boeing’s high expectations. Barnett is The whistleblower was found dead last month.

American Prospects details Barnett’s time at Boeing, including an assignment to the 787 assembly plant’s Materials Evaluation Segregation Area. The space set aside for malfunctioning parts also serves a function as a purgatory for blacklisted quality managers. Barnett’s time at MRSA has seen its fair share of Dreamliner fuselage just disappeared without a trace. His call to the supervisor to look into the missing pieces was laughed at in some cases and directly challenged in others:

But there is no sign of missing parts 47-48 or the hundreds of other parts that have gone missing from MRSA. “You know, we really need to find all these… missing parts,” he commented at the next big meeting, hopefully with 12 managers present. It would be more difficult to fire him. “And if we can’t find them, anything we can’t find, we need to report to the FAA.”

No one laughed, but that wasn’t because they took him seriously.

“We will not report anything to the FAA,” one supervisor stated emphatically.

Boeing requested It is no small matter that workers turn a blind eye when unsuitable parts are lost, perhaps to be put on an airplane. Falsifying documents about any aircraft is a federal felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Barnet wasn’t the only Boeing employee to express their concerns, but management would invent reasons to fire problem employees:

But he is not alone. One time, a human resources officer asked him to review a “weak” performance improvement plan that the company had used to fire William Hobek, another quality manager who refused to “score with a pencil.” ” sections 47-48 are missing. The human resources employee confided that he felt uncomfortable about the justifications the company was using for the layoffs.

Be sure to read the entire section at American Prospects about John Barnett and the threats whistleblowers face when reporting, especially in the aviation industry. The law only allows whistleblowers to file a retaliation complaint against their employer within 90 days. Those complaints are heard by a secret, slow-moving OSHA tribunal that rules against the whistleblower in 97% of cases.