On Wednesday, Democratic Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal chaired a hearing from Boeing whistleblower Sam Salehpour.
“There are mounting serious allegations that Boeing has a broken safety culture and a set of practices that are unacceptable,” said Blumenthal. “These whistleblowers have come forward at great personal risk. In fact, a number of them and others have suffered harassment, isolation, transfers, and even threats of physical violence.”
Milleron tells WAMC that Salehpour is providing crucial insight into corporate malfeasance at Boeing.
MILLERON: They are pushing elements together to form the body of the plane that should be brought together in another way, and by pushing them by force, by actually jumping on these joints that need to be brought together, they are stressing the materials. And after time goes by, that can create a hazard that can lead to a crash. So, [Salehpour is] trying to wave his hands, he did go through all the proper channels at Boeing. He was chastised at Boeing, his job was threatened, his life was actually threatened. People put metal in his tires of his car that was determined that a person actually had to do that, he couldn't, it wasn't that he just drove over nails. He has had a very difficult time in a normal course of his work raising safety issues.
WAMC: Now, what do you want the Justice Department to do about this with this testimony?
Okay, so the Justice Department meeting with the families is Wednesday the 24th, and they are deciding whether or not to continue with the deferred prosecution agreement that they made with Boeing. So, this agreement says, Boeing if you have been accused of a crime, and if you behave well for three years, then your crime will be dismissed, the charges against you will be dismissed. And we are saying that's completely inappropriate, because this company that killed 346 people is now continuing to put many lives at risk. It's a miracle actually, that there hasn't been a third crash. We are saying to the Justice Department, you need to prosecute this misbehaving accused. Boeing is accused, you gave them a deal, they are not following through with their side of the deal, they are not taking good care, and so you need to prosecute them and have a trial.
Now, to tie this back into your candidacy for the 1st Massachusetts District, you've pointed out that the incumbent Congressman Richard Neal has been a recipient of campaign donations from Boeing. How does this tie into your efforts to oust him from that seat in this year's election?
We have to pay attention to corporate wrongdoing. So, for example, another example of corporate wrongdoing is greedflation. So, corporations have raised, especially cereal, prices in the grocery store. And they make excuses for doing that. When you look at the facts, whether they are having supply chain issues, whether their excuses bear out, they do not bear out that corporations are raising and getting record profits off of raising these prices. So, a person who is representing us in the federal government needs to go after such bad behavior that is hurting materially, daily, hurting the people in the district. And Richard Neal has the highest corporate contributions of any member of the House of Representatives, and he is behaving accordingly. He does not go after the corporations that are hurting the people in his district, not in the realm of pharmaceuticals, not in the realm of grocery store prices, not in the realm of many different areas that he needs to pay attention to. But he is overlooking- When you look at his contributions, you can see the reason why he's overlooking them.
A spokesperson for Boeing says the company encourages employees to speak up, and says it has had a 500% increase in internal employee reports since January.
In response to Milleron’s candidacy, the Neal campaign told WAMC that “working with President Biden, we’ve made historic progress by delivering generational investments in our infrastructure, passing the largest legislation ever to tackle climate change, addressing racial injustice, and creating tens of thousands of good-paying jobs.”
