Boeing CEO urges workers to speak up, expects ‘brutal’ feedback

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg is inviting employees to help expose deep-seated problems — even if the response is “brutal” to the planemaker’s leaders. “I want to hear what the employees have to say,” Ortberg said during his second companywide address to Boeing workers on Wednesday. “And what we’ll do is we’re going to put an action plan on those things, and I think they’re going to be brutal to leadership, quite frankly.” Speaking to workers on location in St. Louis with tens of thousands more tuning in via a webcast, Ortberg touched on topics ranging from employee bonuses to the role that Elon Musk and DOGE are playing on the tardy Air Force One jets that Boeing is preparing for the Pentagon. But much of the session was spent addressing the company’s internal dysfunction, an effort Ortberg sees as crucial to improving quality and safety in its factories and engineering labs, according to people who monitored the webcast. Ortberg said he has set up a “culture working group” of workers to advise him on the values and “behaviors” of the company. They represent a cross-section of Boeing sites, unions and other employee groups. The new CEO, who started in August, also expressed dismay over Boeing’s culture, echoing remarks he made during his first all-hands session in November. It’s a reference to the lack of civility with which people treat each other — as well the harsh backlash that lower-level workers and managers can face for flagging operations breakdowns, as whistleblowers have documented.<br/>