17 May 2024 Boeing Blasted for Prioritizing Racial Quotas Over Performance and Safety

Washington, D.C. – At today’s annual Boeing shareholder meeting, author and leading Critical Race Theory (CRT) critic James Lindsay will present a proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) to hold the world’s largest aerospace company accountable for its discriminatory and dangerous Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies.

After multiple safety concerns regarding Boeing aircraft came to light this year, the company faced additional scrutiny when revealed by many, including Lindsay, that executive compensation is now tied no longer to simply performance and safety measures but also to DEI and ESG benchmarks.

James Lindsay

One of Lindsay’s January posts on this topic went viral on X (formerly Twitter) when X Chairman Elon Musk reposted it:

Let’s have a close look at Boeing and DEI! Boeing’s corporate filings with the SEC reveal that in beginning 2022, the annual bonus plan to reward CEO and executives for increasing profit for shareholders and prioritizing safety was changed to reward them if they hit DEI targets.

At today’s meeting, Lindsay will present Proposal 7 to ask Boeing’s board to commission and publish a report on whether and how Boeing’s DEI policies create risks of discriminating on the basis of protected categories like race and sex, as well as the potential costs of such discrimination to the business.

“At worst, programs like DEI and ESG are discriminatory and illegal,” says Lindsay who will present remarks. “At best, they’re corporate moneys spent on a de facto tollman imposing artificial fees that divert Boeing from its mission and reduce shareholder returns.”

FEP has already started writing the report for Boeing, providing evidence of the company’s discrimination in the proposal’s supporting statement:

Boeing is explicitly involved in discriminating on the basis of race and other protected categories, stating that: “To advance equity and diversity … we will strive to achieve by 2025”: (1) “Increase the Black representation rate in the U.S. by 20%”; (2) “Achieve parity in retention rates of all groups”; (3) “Close representation gaps for historically underrepresented groups.” In addition, Boeing is expressly incentivizing employees to engage in this racial and other discrimination, stating that “we are galvanizing our entire workforce to improve equity through annual incentives to advance equitable talent selections.” Finally, Boeing allocates additional resources via “Business Resource Groups” that also appear facially discriminatory in light of group names like the “Boeing Black Employees Association.”

By tethering itself to DEI benchmarks instead of prioritizing performance and safety, Boeing not only risks the lives of those who fly its aircraft, but also subjects the company and its executives to liability. As noted in the supporting statement:

In just the past year, a corporation was successfully sued for a single case of discrimination against a white employee resulting in an award of more than $25 million. And the risk of being sued for such discrimination appears only to be rising. With roughly 140,000 employees, Boeing likely has at least 100,000 employees who are potentially the victims of this type of illegal discrimination because they are white, Asian, male, or straight. Accordingly, even if only 10 percent of such employees were to file suit, and only 10 percent of those prove successful, the cost to the company could exceed $20 billion. And while racial equity audits can run to $3 or $4 million, this report should cost much less, as it need review only the potentially discriminatory programs, unless Boeing has established so many such programs that its liability for this discrimination must be expected to be much higher.

More information about this proposal, as well as other key votes, can be found in FEP’s mobile and web app, ProxyNavigator.

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