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Boeing once again finds itself in the crosshairs of a controversy as a technician at the company’s satellite factory is blowing the whistle on the company’s “toxic culture.” The whistleblower, Craig Garriott, claims employees in the satellite division are being forced to take unnecessary risks with their lives.
Garriott, 53, told CBS News this week, “They’ve taken the focus off quality, the focus off the people on the floor, and they’ve put it completely on profit and going fast. I’m afraid with Boeing in the hands that it’s in now down here, they’re not gonna listen to me until somebody dies.”
He recalled one incident at Boeing’s Los Angeles-area military and commercial satellite plant when a four-ton satellite estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars crashed to the factory floor because it wasn’t properly secured. He compared it to “a plane falling out of the sky.”
“One person was underneath that satellite and they barely got out,” Garriott said. “It’s the worst thing that can possibly happen on a site.”
Garriott claims he has reported between 300 and 400 safety violations over the past year to the company’s higher-ups. In April, he sued Boeing claiming management harassed and retaliated against him over those reports.
“When I first started at Boeing, the guys that spoke up and said, ‘Hey, this doesn’t feel right,’ those guys were revered,” Garriott said. “You speak up now, you’re a troublemaker.”
Boeing, of course, denies Garriott’s claims. A company spokesperson stated Boeing has “strict policies prohibiting retaliation toward employees who raise concerns.” Boeing also said in a statement that the company had investigated Garriott’s claims and disputed allegations he made in his lawsuit.
Over the past few years, Boeing has had repeated incidents of troubling failures including two astronauts being stuck on the International Space Station because of issues with the Boeing Starliner.
In addition to that, there have been several frightening failures with Boeing planes.
In May, a Boeing 737-300 operated by the Senegal-based airline Transair skidded off the runway while on fire at Blaise Diagne International Airport in Dakar. Earlier that month, one of its 767 cargo planes crash landed on a runway in Istanbul after its landing gear failed.
One month prior to those incidents, Southwest Airlines flight 3695, traveling from Denver to Houston, was forced to make an emergency landing to its point of origin when its right engine exterior paneling peeled back and blew off during takeoff.
Also in May, a Boeing whistleblower died suddenly and under mysterious circumstances after discussing the possible causes of safety failures on multiple passenger jets. Two months before that, another Boeing whistleblower was found dead from a gunshot wound outside his hotel in Charleston, South Carolina – home of Boeing’s 787 manufacturing facility.