Boeing finally shuts down its DEI division
Boeing’s racist hiring goals in 2024
According to a report from Bloomberg news today, Boeing has now dismantled its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) division, with its head leaving the company.
Staff from Boeing’s DEI office will be combined with another human resources team focused on talent and employee experience, according to people familiar with the matter. Sara Liang Bowen, a Boeing vice president who led the now-defunct department, left the company on Thursday. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted phrase above tells us all we need to know. The focus under Boeing’s new CEO Kelly Ortberg will be “talent and employee experience,” not skin color or gender.
Bowen wrote the following in announcing her dismissal:
It has been the privilege of my lifetime to lead Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the Boeing company these past 5+ years. Our team strived every day to support the evolving brilliance and creativity of our workforce. The team achieved so much – sometimes imperfectly, never easily – and dreamed of doing much more still. [emphasis mine]
As far as I can tell, all that Bowen accomplished was to destroy the reputation of Boeing as a quality manufacturer of aerospace products. Instead, it became a place which hired people based on their race, and didn’t care if they knew the difference between a screwdriver and a forklift. The screen capture to the right comes from the company’s 2024 Boeing Sustainability & Social Impact Report [pdf], which is still online, as is the webpage of Boeing’s DEI division. Both still tout the racist quota goals of this DEI department that forced the company to consider race and gender above talent and experience in its hiring. Hopefully that ugliness will vanish soon as well.
Meanwhile, Boeing union employees on the west coast are about to vote on a third contract proposal, having rejected the previous two and going on strike since mid-September. I suspect the decision above to get rid of this poisonous DEI department will sit well with those union employees, and likely help to encourage them to approve the plan.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Boeing’s racist hiring goals in 2024
According to a report from Bloomberg news today, Boeing has now dismantled its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) division, with its head leaving the company.
Staff from Boeing’s DEI office will be combined with another human resources team focused on talent and employee experience, according to people familiar with the matter. Sara Liang Bowen, a Boeing vice president who led the now-defunct department, left the company on Thursday. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted phrase above tells us all we need to know. The focus under Boeing’s new CEO Kelly Ortberg will be “talent and employee experience,” not skin color or gender.
Bowen wrote the following in announcing her dismissal:
It has been the privilege of my lifetime to lead Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the Boeing company these past 5+ years. Our team strived every day to support the evolving brilliance and creativity of our workforce. The team achieved so much – sometimes imperfectly, never easily – and dreamed of doing much more still. [emphasis mine]
As far as I can tell, all that Bowen accomplished was to destroy the reputation of Boeing as a quality manufacturer of aerospace products. Instead, it became a place which hired people based on their race, and didn’t care if they knew the difference between a screwdriver and a forklift. The screen capture to the right comes from the company’s 2024 Boeing Sustainability & Social Impact Report [pdf], which is still online, as is the webpage of Boeing’s DEI division. Both still tout the racist quota goals of this DEI department that forced the company to consider race and gender above talent and experience in its hiring. Hopefully that ugliness will vanish soon as well.
Meanwhile, Boeing union employees on the west coast are about to vote on a third contract proposal, having rejected the previous two and going on strike since mid-September. I suspect the decision above to get rid of this poisonous DEI department will sit well with those union employees, and likely help to encourage them to approve the plan.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
And now Sara can only fly on Boeing Jets…
So….most of the DEI division employees are still working. Will the rest of the Boeing staff have to tiptoe around them, for fear of triggers and microaggresions?
”I suspect the decision above to get rid of this poisonous DEI department will sit well with those union employees, and likely help to encourage them to approve the plan.”
I doubt it. Boeing’s unions have been well to the left of its management on things like this.
Color me skeptical.
BRIDGE has been promoting the dismantling of DEI departments (and making it the responsibility of everyone) since at least April. Hearing that the department has been shuttered, but that the DEI employees are still there (and still in HR) says to me that they’re more on the ‘integrate DEI’ than ‘end DEI’ end of things.
When (or if) Boeing releases a statement of some sort we’ll have something to go on, but ‘closes DEI department and the VP of DEI wasn’t given a new VP slot’ isn’t close to anything definitive.
I work in a unionized workplace. DEIA is nasty, but it is not the kind of thing that drives disputes with organized labor. It is wages, benefits, working conditions, job security and opportunities to grow. These are the things most people care about at work. You really have to separate what people complain about and what they do something about. When people really care, they act, they don’t just talk. In fact, they often talk more softly or not at all when closest to action. Boeing should take this strike as a good sign. You don’t bother to strike if you think the company has no future anyway. You look for a better job. There are tons of opportunities for engineers and mechanics now. If Boeing dies, it will be because it has already driven away most of the workers worth having. The same goes for customers and suppliers.
Related:
U.S.A. AND THE ANALOGY TO BOEING
“In life you can draw parallels, and it seems appropriate here to draw an analogy between the Boeing company and its many multi layered ongoing problems and the United States of America and its current contrived political turmoil and the trend.”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/u-s-a-and-the-analogy-to-boeing
This sounds a lot like the merger of Boeing and McDonnel-Douglas. The people who drove McD into the merger were able to jump to Boeing, and put it into its current position.
Unless the entire division got nuked and all or almost all of its people were fired, the locusts will fly.
Something similar is happening with Toyota. Toyotas website under DEI is “so proud” they went from 10th, to seventh, to fourth place in the nation. Now this; (I chose this website for the headline)
https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/toyota-follows-growing-trend-companies-halting-dei-policies-initiatives
Their new focus is on stem and education. A trend happening with Anheuser Bush, John Deere, Harley Davison motorcycles, and even target announced this;
“For a decade, Target has had one of the best corporate Pride merch collections of any company. This year, however, the company is giving in to hateful bigots who are threatening the company with boycotts and attacks over its Pride collection. The company has now announced that it will be removing some of its more “controversial” Pride products.”
“According to a spokesperson, Target has seen an increase in confrontations between angry shoppers and employees, and incidents of Pride merch being taken off the shelves and thrown on the floor.”
From “out” magazine website.
It appears mental illness is no longer the chic thing and people have lost their tolerance for it… Too much of it in their face and people are voting with their dollars, boycotting everything that makes their stomach queasy including the shows on TV with the same sex kissing that makes you feel as queasy as eating bugs grasshoppers and worms. So many children seduced by this lifestyle are so miserable that is is bleeding over into society, thanks to social media, realizing that it is not a path that is sustainable. living a fantasy does not prepare you for the hardships of reality. And reality really sucks.
I left Boeing 20 years ago just when diversity training was initiated. More qualified employees were let go so unqualified, diverse employees could be retained. Boeing is just reaping what they sowed years ago.
…to be replaced soon by its new Inclusion, Equity and Diversity division.
Catch Thirty-Thr33:
Yes, the IED department, aka Improvised Explosive Device: truth in advertising, like the original DIE. Man, these folks can’t get away from the destructive acronyms.
Another horror story
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/royal-new-zealand-navy-loses-a-ship.44490/page-3#post-721535
They moved to Talent. That is recruitment, and on boarding.
So the same people now have a role is selecting who is and is not hire.
DEI was not removed, just renamed.
All: The cynicism and pessimism is certainly warranted, after the last four decades. We must remember however that the CEO made it very plain the criteria now to be used is “talent and experience.” He seems to be moving very aggressively to change things. I suspect he will not tolerate anyone defying him on this.