Boeing Contractors Say They Were Treated Like "Cockroaches"

"We were replacing doors like we were replacing our underwear."

Testification Station

In new testimony, workers for Boeing and one of its key suppliers described high workload, low morale, and a sense that they existed in the lowest rungs of a very dysfunctional food chain.

As CNN reports, employees who spoke to federal regulators suggested many times over during an investigation into January's Alaska Airlines door plug blowout that poor workplace conditions were behind the debacle.

"As far as the workload, I feel like we were definitely trying to put out too much product, right?" an unidentified Boeing worker told the National Transportation Safety Board in testimony reviewed by CNN. "That’s how mistakes are made. People try to work too fast."

Workers for Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, which supplies the embattled manufacturer with components for its planes, told the agency that beyond the heavy workload, there were communication breakdowns between the disparate firms' teams who worked together in the same factory.

As one Spirit employee who worked at the Boeing plant that manufactured the offending 737 put it: "Basically we’re the cockroaches of the factory."

Process Breakdown

Prior to its Alaska Airlines investigation, which is the subject of a two-day hearing this week, the NTSB had learned that the fuselage blew out because it was missing four bolts meant to keep it in place.

According to employee testimony, the Spirit-made door had arrived at the Boeing factory with all its bolts intact, but because it needed rivet repairs, the plug had been removed. Communication was so poor between Spirit and Boeing staff that something seemingly happened in the factory that led to the 737 being deployed without the bolts.

As Boeing employees told federal investigators, that sort of thing was not at all uncommon.

"The planes come in jacked up every day," one worker said. "Every day."

Per another, employees were thrown into "uncharted waters" when it came to the volume of repairs they were tasked with — much of which they hadn't been given extra training for.

"We were replacing doors like we were replacing our underwear," the second Boeing worker said.

While this NTSB probe is focused only on the Alaska Airlines incident from earlier this year, ensuing safety issues and bizarre circumstances surrounding the death of whistleblowers have cast a long shadow on the aerospace giant — especially as its troubled spacecraft languishes on the International Space Station, stranding several astronauts there indefinitely.

More on Boeing: Stranded Astronauts Could Be Stuck on the Space Station for Another 5 Months, NASA Says