Boeing CEO Says He Decided Not To Quit After 737 Max Crashes And Gave Up Bonuses
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg testifies before a Senate committee last week on the 737 Max.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
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The CEO of Boeing says he considered stepping down in the aftermath of two 737 Max plane crashes in the last year that killed 346 people, but he says he is committed to staying on and seeing the giant defense and aerospace company through one of the worst crises of its century-long existence.
“I think it’s fair to say I’ve thought about it,” Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg said Wednesday at a business conference. “But to be frank, that’s not what’s in my character. I don’t see running away from a challenge, resigning, as the right solution.”
Muilenburg’s comments come after he and his company faced criticism from lawmakers in two congressional hearings last week on Boeing’s role in the deadly plane crashes in Indonesia Oct. 29, 2018, and in Ethiopia on March 10 of this year. In his testimony, Muilenburg acknowledged Boeing made mistakes in the design and development of flight control system on the 737 Max that contributed to the crashes, and subsequent missteps in how the company responded to the crashes.
“They happened on my watch,” says Muilenburg of his reasons for staying put. “And I feel obligated, I feel responsible to stay on it, to work with the team to fix it, to see it through.”
Muilenburg says he is giving up his bonuses this year as the company struggles regain public confidence in the aftermath of the 737 Max crashes.
The CEO took home more than $23 million in salary and bonuses last year. But this year, Muilenburg says he’s asked Boeing’s board of directors to waive his bonuses.
Speaking Wednesday at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference, Muilenburg said he felt “a sense of responsibility … and conveying to our team, to all of our customers, to the families (of crash victims), that to me, it’s not about the money. It’s about the importance of what we do and our commitment to safety as a company.”
Muilenburg met with family members of some of those killed in the two crashes last Tuesday evening, in between the Senate and House committee hearings. He says he’s “heartbroken” by their stories of the losses they’ve suffered, adding, “I wish I had gone to visit them earlier,” he said.
In congressional hearings last week, some lawmakers ripped into Muilenburg for his high salary and multi-million dollars worth of stock options and bonuses, and for at that point, not offering to give up any of that lucrative compensation.
“What does accountability mean? Are you taking a cut in pay?” Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., angrily asked Muilenburg. “Are you working for free from now on till you can cure this problem?”
Pointing to the family members of some of those killed in the 737 Max plane crashes sitting in the gallery, Cohen continued to scold the CEO. “These people’s relatives are not coming back. They’re gone. And you won’t take a pay cut? Are you giving up any money?”
In an interview with CNBC Tuesday, Boeing Board Chairman David Calhoun said that exchange affected Muilenburg.
“Dennis was very uncomfortable in that situation,” Calhoun said of the exchange during the House Transportation Committee hearing. Calhoun says Muilenburg listened “to every story that the victims families presented to him, changed him for life. Now he’s got it in his core, and in his bones. It’s had a tremendous impact.”
Calhoun says the Board still has full confidence in Muilenburg. “From the vantage point of our board,” he said, “Dennis has done everything right.”
That comment doesn’t set well with some families of crash victims.
“His words are simply an insult to humanity,” says Paul Njoroge, whose wife, three small children and mother-in-law all were killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10.
“How can he dare say that (Muilenburg) did ‘everything right’ while it’s so apparent that the company executives knew about” the flawed design of the flight control system that contributed both crashes. Njoroge adds, “Calhoun’s words were disrespectful to me, and to all the flying public.”
As for Muilenburg’s comments that he is “heartbroken” after meeting with some families, those words, too, ring hollow.
“He is exploiting and marketing the meeting with families for Boeing’s gain,” says Michael Stumo, whose 23-year old daughter Samya was killed in the Ethiopian crash.
Stumo says the claim Muilenburg spent “a few hours with the families” is “untrue. He spent a fraction of that time with just a few families with no effort to reach out to other families.”
Stumo went on to criticize Muilenburg for not explaining why the company “failed to fix the self-hijacking 737 MAX 8 after the Indonesian crash when they had clear knowledge of the problem. They hid it from pilots, failed to fix it … (and) as a result, my daughter died. Muilenburg must resign. He is not a leader, but an actor shielding his company from accountability.”
Under New Deal, Australian Women’s And Men’s Soccer Will Get Equal Share Of Revenue
Australia celebrates a goal during its knockout round match against Norway during the Women’s World Cup in France in June. Football Federation Australia announced a new deal on Wednesday to improve pay and conditions for the women’s team, known as the Matildas.
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Australia’s soccer governing body says it has reached an agreement with its top-flight men’s and women’s teams that will give the teams an equal share of player-generated revenue and lift the salaries of its women’s team.
Under the collective bargaining agreement between Football Federation Australia and Professional Footballers Australia, the two teams will be granted 24% of the revenue that they generate: 19% for themselves, and 5% to be invested in their names in the country’s youth national teams. The share paid to players will rise one point a year.
Salaries for the women’s team will rise under the new deal. Top women’s players will make about $57,000 USD a year in 2020, up from about $38,000 this year.
The FFA says the deal amounts to a 90% raise in guaranteed minimum payments for the Matildas, as the women’s team is known. The men’s team is the Socceroos. (Australia has achieved relative parity in team nicknames.)
The contract promise other improvements for the women’s team. The federation says it will upgrade the parental leave policy to provide more support for Matildas both during pregnancy and when they return to the pitch. Training conditions will now match those of the men’s team. And the Matildas will travel in business class on international flights, as the Socceroos long have.
The agreement is good for four years, governing the payouts for the next men’s and women’s World Cups. Australia is among the nations vying to host the 2023 women’s tournament.
The Matildas have historically fared better on the international stage than their male counterparts. At the 2019 Women’s World Cup, the Matildas were eliminated by Norway on penalties in the round of 16, while the Socceroos finished last in their group at the 2018 men’s tournament.
Under the new deal, players will get 40% of the prize money awarded by FIFA for playing in a World Cup, rising to 50% if they qualify for the knockout round. That’s up from the 30% the teams made before.
But it also represents the contract’s limits in terms of parity, because the payouts from FIFA are so much smaller for the women’s tournament. In 2023, women’s teams will share $60 million, while in 2022 the men will divide $440 million – a pot more than seven times bigger.
Australia joins other countries in improving pay and working conditions for its women’s teams. Norway began paying its men’s and women’s teams equal salaries in 2017, and New Zealand announced pay parity and international business-class travel for its women’s team last year.
Meanwhile, the U.S. women’s team lawsuit alleging gender discrimination by U.S. soccer continues. Mediation between the two parties broke down, and the case is headed for trial in May 2020.
Alex Morgan, co-captain of the U.S. team that made “equal pay” their cry of victory at last summer’s World Cup, said in August that she’s hopeful the two sides can find a resolution before going to court.
The team’s fight for parity isn’t for themselves, she said, but for the next generation of players.
“We’re not going to reap the benefits from equal pay and what we’re fighting for,” she told NPR. “That next generation should feel confident that they’re in good hands, and that we are setting up this structure, and this compensation, and this true equality for them.”
Federal Judge Throws Out ‘Conscience Rights’ Rule For Health Care Workers
A federal judge has thrown out the Trump administration’s “conscience rights” rule for health care workers.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Religious freedom has been a major focus of the Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration. Today there was a major blow to those efforts. A federal judge in Manhattan has thrown out a rule from HHS designed to protect the so-called conscience rights of health care workers.
Here to explain is NPR health policy reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin. Hey, Selena.
SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: Hi.
CHANG: So can you just first explain, what are conscience rights? What does that even mean?
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Right. So this relates to the HHS Office for Civil Rights, and that’s an office that receives complaints in three different categories. The biggest is patient privacy, like HIPAA. It also receives complaints of civil rights violations.
And then this last court category is conscience rights. So what that means is a doctor or a nurse who has religious objections to certain procedures or services – commonly, we talk about abortion, care for transgender patients, assisted suicide – if a doctor or nurse like that is forced to participate in that kind of care, they can file a complaint that their conscience rights have been violated to the Office for Civil Rights. And the director of that office is Roger Severino. He has made clear since he came in that religious freedom and conscience rights is his priority in that role, and that’s the context for this rule.
CHANG: OK. That’s the context. So when the rule came out in May, what did this rule do?
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: So the things that it did is it expanded who could file that type of a complaint that I just described to billing staff, scheduling staff. A doctor or nurse or this other kind of health worker did not have to give their employer prior notice that they objected to give this kind of care. There were no exceptions for medical emergencies. If a hospital, for instance, was found to have violated a health care worker’s conscience rights, HHS could have taken away all of its federal funding.
CHANG: Wow.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Yeah. So…
CHANG: It’s a large consequence.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Yeah, really big consequences. So part of the justification for issuing this rule is the office said that there was this big unmet need, that providers of faith were being forced to do things all over the country. Historically, there’s only been one of these kind of complaints that’s come into the office every year. That’s been for the last 10 years or so.
CHANG: OK.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: But Severino keeps on saying that that number of complaints has just shot up. And he said last year, the office got 343 complaints.
CHANG: Wow, that’s quite an ascent. But after this rule came out, wasn’t it immediately challenged in court?
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Yes. It was – the HHS was sued right away in this case by Planned Parenthood, the state of New York, lots of other states and cities and organizations. And today, what happened is the U.S. District Court Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York vacated the rule. He found the rule’s violations of federal law were, quote, “numerous, fundamental and far-reaching.” And he also found that HHS exaggerated the need for this rule. So remember I was just talking about 343 complaints.
CHANG: Right, the number of claims that came in last year. What about them?
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Right. So apparently, that’s an – a made-up number. The government submitted…
CHANG: Really?
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: …These complaints.
CHANG: OK.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: And the court analyzed them and says, instead of 343, the real number is 20. A government lawyer said on the record that that is the ballpark for the complaints that have come into the office. So the judge called that admission fatal to HHS’s justification.
CHANG: Three hundred forty-three versus 20 – that’s quite a discrepancy.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Yes.
CHANG: OK. So what’s next in the litigation?
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: So there is weirdly another case against this rule in another district court. This one is in the Northern District of California. A ruling is expected there, but it’s not clear what happens now that the rule’s been vacated. I asked HHS what’s next, and it would not comment on a possible appeal – only said that it was reviewing this court’s opinion.
CHANG: That’s NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin. Thanks, Selena.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Thank you.
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