“We’ve taken important steps to foster a safety culture that empowers and encourages all employees to share their voice. But there is more work to do,” Boeing said Monday.
A new report by federal safety experts found major issues with Boeing’s safety culture — including a “disconnect” between senior management and other employees, and a fear of retaliation when reporting safety concerns.
The report released Monday had been requested by Congress and was completed by a panel of experts that convened in March 2023.
The report found “gaps in Boeing’s safety journey” and described the safety culture as “inadequate” and "confusing.”
This isn’t “safety culture”, this is “capitalist culture”.
Ed Pierson, a former senior manager at Boeing’s 737 Factory in Renton, Washington, raised concerns to his supervisors about the dangerously unstable production environment and risks to the safety of airplanes.
The factory was plagued with overworked employees, chronic part shortages, quality issues, and unrelenting schedule pressure to deliver MAX airplanes.
Ed recommended Boeing leadership shutdown production operations before both crashes, but sadly he was ignored.
After the crashes he implored the leaders of the NTSB, FAA, and DOT to conduct a thorough investigation of the factory and to involve international accident investigators, but was ignored again.
He shared his story with the U.S. Congress. In turn, Congress directed the FAA to conduct a proper investigation.
Instead, the FAA focused on helping Boeing recertify the airplane. In response, Ed conducted his own investigation and linked factory conditions to both crashes. He is determined to shine a light on the truth to help avoid future tragedies.
(Edit: Forgot to mention that I broke Pierson’s text wall into paragraphs to make it easier to read.)
source: https://www.edpierson.com/
“Safety culture…” as if this was some sort of ethnic group. Safety shouldn’t be called a “culture” to Boeing, it should be called a top priority.
But then, of course, they couldn’t blame their employees for not being team players.
This is actually a defined and very common term in the industry when talking about management of development processes for safety critical systems
Sounds like a better term is necessary, at least when communicating with the public.
It’s a cross-industry term. Construction, factory production, food services, just about any manual labor industry uses “safety culture” to describe a dominant attitude of life safety above all other priorities. Just because you haven’t heard it before doesn’t mean it’s not common. In fact, if you do manual labor and you haven’t heard it, be very concerned about the environment you work in
Yeah it’s a basic tenet of ergonomics for instance. It’s part of company culture.
It should be a culture, though. It should be so ingrained in the people doing the work that safety is the top priority, that they don’t have to consciously think about it or be conflicted about meeting deadlines instead of following proper quality and safety checks. The problem isn’t calling it a culture, the problem is that the culture doesn’t actually exist. They’ve quashed it by saddling their workers with conflicting priorities.
Culture != ethnic group
What exactly do you think that proves? It certainly doesn’t support that culture and ethnic group is the same thing.
So the thing that says it’s a culture doesn’t mean it’s a culture? Is this one of those “what are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” situations?
The image you showed says an ethnic group share a common cultural background, that does not mean ethnic group is the same thing as culture…
If you’re still struggling with understanding the two concepts, ask a Large Language Model.
I work in the snack food industry and we use similar terminology for food safety.
So I’m seeing a few comments deriding “safety culture”, as in “vAlUiNg LiFe iSn’T a CuLtUrE” and “tHeY ShOuLd dO ThAt AnYwAy”
But, see, in this country (and many others), production and getting it done tends to trump everything else. I personally know roofing laborers, laborers, who would rather fall off of a roof than wear a fall protection harness. They don’t get a bonus for finishing faster, they don’t have to buy the safety gear. They just don’t want safeguard themselves because a) it’s a hassle, and b) “I’ve never needed it before”.
Safety culture has to be developed in just about any enterprise. Labor and management both have to exert effort to develope and maintain a dominant attitude of life safety. And that dominant attitude is what people mean when they talk about “safety culture”.
Yes, protecting life above profit should be the default setting. Should. But it isn’t. Yes, management should bear the brunt of fault when safety culture is lost, yet there’s still a measure of responsibility on labor to maintain a safety culture and push back against the siren call of getting the job done
Safety regulations have always been written in blood.
How much blood, though, appears to be up for debate.
Exactly. Safety is inconvenient, uncomfortable, and not immediately apparently necessary. And many places that don’t have a culture of safety develop a culture of anti safety. Without a safety culture you forget your safety glasses and swear you’ll wear them next time, with it you go back and get some.
I long long time ago I was working on my first BIG construction project. A safety coordinator came up to me and told me to put on my safety glasses before cutting… something, i don’t remember what.
Now this guy was real chill, and had an easy manner about him. He didn’t yell and scream to get his way, and i was a young 20 years old and headstrong as any young man could be. He says something that changed my line and probably saved my eyes more than once. Imagine a 5’nothing pissy kid pushing back against wearing safety glasses and this 6’5" man with the kindest eyes and a slight smile reaching out, putting a hand on the shoulder, and saying: "Bro, I don’t know about you, but when I’m with my girl, I want to see ev-ry-thing.
I paused for a good ten seconds, nodded, and have always worn my safety glasses since
Respecting the law and avoiding hundreds of deaths by usage of your products is now considered part of a “culture”
No it has been for years. People involved in development of safety systems use this term all the time
And these are the type of people we’re trusting on more than just airplanes. This report should hit the desk of NASA like an anvil. Artemis depends on it.
This is precisely what happens when the business bros get in and take power away from the engineers and pilots.
Profits > people
