Boeing workers strike, PwC to lay off nearly 1,800 employees

Greetings, comms pros! Let’s take a look at a few news stories from the past week and see what we can learn from them.

1 . Boeing  workers strike

Boeing workers went on strike today, rejecting a contract offer from the company that took away annual bonuses and walking off the job for the first trike in 16 years. This promises to halt production at Boeing’s Seattle manufacturing headquarters, compromising the embattled company’s supply chain a time when Boeing’s production process falls under heavy scrutiny.

According to The New York Times

Kelly Ortberg, the company’s new chief executive, had urged employees to approve the deal. “A strike would put our shared recovery in jeopardy, further eroding trust with our customers,” he said in a video statement on Wednesday.

The contract had been agreed upon by union leaders and company management on Sunday after months of talks. It included many gains for workers, but fell short of what the union initially sought. Union leaders had hoped to get bigger raises and other concessions from the company, but said it was still “the best contract we’ve negotiated in our history.”

In a statement on Friday after the vote, Boeing said it was “committed to resetting our relationship with our employees and the union.” The company said it was “ready” to continue negotiations on a new labor contract.

With union numbers on the rise, this incident echoes the Stellantis strike last fall, this incident as the latest high-profile reminder that there’s a right and a wrong way to communicate about labor issues.

Note the distinction in focus between new CEO Ortberg’s message to employees earlier in the week and Boeing’s newest statement: The first warns employees that customer trust will hurt the business, while the latter centers the focus around repairing trust with employees first. Labor negotiations are a prime instance for corporate communications to demonstrate that the “start from within” philosophy is more than a wellness mantra.

When Boeing’s former CEO Dave Calhoun testified before Congress this past June, he apologized for whistleblower retaliation and teased changes to its internal practices but fell short of codifying them into concrete actions.

This is now Ortberg’s charge. He faces the challenge of learning from Calhoun’s past mistakes, including positioning the findings of an FAA audit about Boeing’s dubious manufacturing processes as a function of employees not understanding work instructions and procedures. Kelly has an opportunity to help Boeing demonstrate an understanding that the implementation and enforcement of new procedures must be overseen, enacted and reviewed by senior leaders.

There are many practical ways for Ortberg to center the narrative around transparency and accountability: It starts with streamlining manufacturing comms that are grounded in consistent reporting procedures, and it ends with an employer brand that Boeing can be proud of. Since Boeing acquired Spirit AeroSystems in July, it now has a tangible opportunity to drive this consistency and knowledge-sharing across its business.

Accountability disappears when leaders don’t codify proper business practices and cascade them consistently down the hierarchy. Enacting positive behavioral change starts with leaders who own and model it.

Trust is the deeper, qualitative outcome of this behavioral modeling. While meeting the demands of negotiations is important, communicators who step up as reputational guardians should feel comfortable conveying that taking perks away at a time when employees are looking for the company to make strategic investments in them sends a signal that the trust doesn’t flow both ways.

2. PwC announces job cuts for around 1,800 employees

Professional services firm PwC announced plans to cut 1,800 jobs, marking the organization’s first major layoffs since 2009. The cuts will impact the company’s American staff and amount to about 2.5% of the total workforce. Impacted staff will be notified in October.

According to The Wall Street Journal:

 “There will be an element of resource action that will impact a relatively small proportion of our people, something that is never easy,” Paul Griggs, PwC’s U.S. leader, said in the memo.

“Ultimately, we are positioning our firm for the future, creating capacity to invest, and anticipating and reacting to the market opportunities of today and tomorrow,” Griggs added. The executive said he would be remiss if he didn’t acknowledge the announcement was being made on Sept. 11, a day on which the firm lost five colleagues.

“To remain competitive and position our business for the future, we are continuing to transform areas of our firm and are aligning our workforce to better support our strategy, including attracting and moving the right talent and skill sets to the areas where we need them most,” Tim Grady, PwC’s U.S. chief operating officer, said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

Any layoff is unfortunate, and these statements from PwC brass aren’t anything novel or earth-shattering. But they do touch on having an eye toward the future and the health of the business.

While there’s no clearly defined path that PwC shared for how it’ll roll the layoffs out, comms pros can look to the recent example of REI’s step-by-step process that shared the news and impacts of layoffs, and most importantly, gave people the chance to breathe after the fact. In PwC’s case, following a compassionate timeline would have included not announcing on 9/11.

Layoffs aren’t easy for anyone, especially those that are impacted. Developing your layoff comms with an eye toward empathy will go a long way toward making them effective.

3. Southwest Airlines makes big changes to its board in response to activist investors

 Facing an activist investor takeover Southwest Airlines announced the imminent resignation of chairman Gary Kelly in Spring 2025. This is a conciliatory move toward activist investor Paul Singer of Elliott Investment Management, who demanded the resignation of both Kelly, and CEO Bob Jordan while urging Southwest’s board to take a closer look at its business.

According to Forbes:

“It’s time to shake things up, not just stir them a bit,” Kelly told shareholders Tuesday in a letter. “The wisdom comes in knowing what to change and what not to change.”

Six of Southwest’s board members will retire in November, Kelly said, making room for four new independent directors “in the near future, including due consideration of up to three of Elliott’s candidates.”

Elliott said Tuesday that it was “pleased” by the overture. “We learned yesterday, which was made public today, that nearly half of Southwest’s board of directors had decided to resign based on shareholder feedback,” the investor group said in a statement. “In our experience, this is unprecedented.”

Earlier this year, we had a prime example of an activist investor’s attempted takeover of a company board take shape through the battle between Nelson Peltz and Disney. Integration with other marketing and other business functions is key to keeping stakeholder interests aligned in these high-stress times, and the proper response mechanics to properly react to the moves activist investors make. Kelly’s note, while long and burying details around his exit date and the tangible decisions, still comes as open and authentic. Candor in communication, and messages straight from your leaders’ mouths, will always lend your organization credibility when it makes moves in response to critics and help it move forward.

4. How about some good news?

• Rumors are swirling about a painting found in a Maine attic being a lost Rembrandt.
• A Belgian artist is transforming tennis balls into furniture.
• A Sumatran tiger cub was born at the San Diego Zoo.
• Ragan Training is great for communications pros to find inspiration and resources.
• You should be rewarded for your work. Find out how to earn an award here!

Have a great weekend comms all-stars!

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports, a good pint and ’90s trivia night.