Procter & Gamble announces 7,000 layoffs, as impact of trade war mounts

Tom Hall

Procter & Gamble headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio [Photo by P&G Media]

Procter & Gamble announced Thursday morning that it will cut 7,000 jobs, or around 15 percent of its global non-production workforce. The consumer products maker also said it may divest some of its brands, although it declined to elaborate.

The announcement was buried in corporate newspeak, but the need to cut costs in the face of growing trade war measures spearheaded by the Trump administration was obviously a major factor. The press release said the company would carry out “interventions in our supply chain—right-sizing and right-locating production” in order to enable “cost reduction” and a “more reliable and resilient supply.”

A related factor is likely a reduction in consumer spending. A report from McKinsey & Company found that “net sentiment” about the economy declined 32 percent in May; rising prices and tariff policies were reported as the top two reasons.

As a result of tariffs, layoffs and price increases will worsen conditions for the working class in the United States and are reaching the breaking point. According to a recent report by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), a majority of Americans cannot afford what the institute calls a “minimal quality of life.” This figure represents a major increase since the turn of the century, with wages largely stagnating while the cost of a minimal quality of life, as measured by LISEP, almost doubled.

More than half of Americans cannot afford a $2,000 emergency, and 38 percent have put off medical care because of cost, LISEP reports. These figures are the direct result of rising inequality. To afford a minimal quality of life, the share of income going to the bottom 60 percent of Americans would have to nearly double, from 22 to 39 percent.

The cuts at Procter & Gamble are the latest in a series of mounting layoffs by US-based firms, including: 20,000 job cuts at UPS, which is also in the midst of an automation-led restructuring; 6,000 more layoffs at Microsoft, following a previous round of cuts in January; 3,500 jobs at Citigroup in its China operations, following plans announced last year to cut 20,000 jobs or 10 percent of its workforce; 1,500 jobs at big box retailer Walmart, and hundreds of employees at Disney.

In its monthly report, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas recorded a sharp year-on-year increase in announced layoffs by US firms. At least 93,816 layoffs were announced last month, up 47 percent from the same time last year. Five months into the year, 696,309 layoffs have been announced, by far the highest number since over 1.4 million layoffs by this time in 2020, during the initial peak of the coronavius pandemic.

“Tariffs, funding cuts, consumer spending, and overall economic pessimism are putting intense pressure on companies’ workforces. Companies are spending less, slowing hiring, and sending layoff notices,” the firm’s senior vice president Andrew Challenger noted.

Federal job cuts, spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which was until recently headed by Elon Musk, accounted for 284,044 layoffs, followed by “market and economic conditions,” dominated by tariffs, at 131,257.

The impact of global trade war since Trump’s “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs in April is beginning to mount across the US and world economy. On Wednesday, Trump’s doubling of his previous tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25 to 50 percent went into effect.

In a warmongering speech last Friday, Trump justified the move on “national security” grounds, making clear that it is part of preparations for world war. “You can’t make a military. What are we going to do, say ‘let’s go to China’ for the army tanks and boats and ships?” he said.

The latest government figures show that imports plummeted by more than 16 percent in April in the aftermath of the tariff announcement. While this is partly due to stockpiling in March in anticipation of the tariffs, there are growing signs that the moves are wreaking havoc on world supply chains. “U.S. factories and businesses also significantly cut their purchases of foreign machinery and other supplies,” according to the New York Times. “Imports from China, a major source of machinery and consumer goods, hit a five-year low.”

The US trade deficit fell chiefly due to a sharp fall in imports. Significantly, a major driver of a modest rise in exports was the movement of gold bullion out of the United States, the Times reported, reflecting growing concerns about the economic and political stability of the US, as well as the world financial system underpinned by the role of the dollar as the reserve currency.

In a recent letter to congressional Democrats, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) claimed that increased revenues due to tariffs would cut the US deficit by $2.8 trillion over 10 years. The CBO also predicts the tariffs will contribute to a shrinking of the economy and 0.4 percent in additional inflation.

The forecast increase in revenues is a drop in the bucket because annual budget deficits are also forecast to increase to $2.5 trillion by the end of the same period. It would also be offset by the impact of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” working its way through Congress, which also includes hundreds of billions in cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other essential social programs. The CBO estimates that the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.

The CBO forecast did not take into account Trump’s doubling of his own steel and aluminum tariffs, which are expected to mean higher prices for cars, new homes, canned goods and other essentials. Even the earlier 25 percent tariffs was expected to add $10,000 to the cost of a new home.

The claims made by Trump, and parroted by the trade union bureaucracy, that tariffs will lead to a resurgence in domestic manufacturing are being rapidly exposed as a total fantasy. In the 21st century, production in any country proceeds through a complex global supply chain network.

An article in The Verge warns that production lines in the US auto industry are already shutting down due to the lack of access to rare earth magnets, the market in which 90 percent is dominated by China. According to the New York Times, “China refines over 99 percent of the world’s supply of so-called heavy rare earths, which are the least common kinds of rare earths. Heavy rare earths are essential for making magnets that can resist the high temperatures and electrical fields found in cars, semiconductors and many other technologies.”

China retaliated against Trump’s levying of tariffs against it by cutting off all access to rare earth minerals in April.

Meanwhile, trade war is having a heavy impact on Canada, the US’s largest trading partner. The country posted its worst ever trade deficit in April, and sales of Canadian-made automobiles plunged 23 percent, according to the Times.

The reality is that the overriding concern behind the tariffs is preparations by US imperialism for war. As Leon Trotsky observed of the spiraling trade wars of the 1930s, which led directly to World War II, “breeding places of nationalism also are the laboratories of terrific conflicts in the future; like a hungry tiger, imperialism has withdrawn into its own national lair to gather itself for a new leap.”

This drive to war was stated bluntly last Friday by Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, at the Reagan National Economic Forum. “We shouldn’t be stockpiling bitcoins,” the billionaire banker said during a discussion of the “national security” implications for industry. “We should be stockpiling guns, bullets, tanks, planes, drones, you know, rare earths. We know we need to do it. It’s not a mystery.”

He added: “[t]he military guys tell you that, you know, if there’s a war in the South China Sea, we have missiles for seven days … we can’t say that with a straight face and think that’s okay. So we know what to do. We just got to now go about doing it.”

With these words, the head of the largest American bank is arguing for a militarized economy to prepare for World War III against China. But he considers the most serious threat to American capitalism not China but the “enemy within.”

“What I really worry about is us,” he said. “Can we get our own act together, our own values, our own capability, our own management?

“I always get asked this question: Are we going to be the reserve currency? No. You know, if we are not the preeminent military and the preeminent economy in 40 years, we will not be the reserve currency.”

Dimon urged a return to what he called “our virtues: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise, equal opportunity, family, God, country.” This is a veiled call for massive repression and dictatorship in order to impose “unity” from above.

The Musk-Trump blood feud and the US political crisis

Patrick Martin

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, left, claps as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk prepares to depart after speaking at a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show, on Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

The eruption of a public conflict between President Donald Trump and his former budget adviser, Elon Musk—the world’s richest man—speaks to the extraordinary level of crisis and conflict within the state apparatus, generated by an intensifying economic crisis and mounting popular opposition to the corporate-financial oligarchy.

Musk officially left the Trump administration last Friday, his final day as a “special government employee” in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has led the assault on federal workers and the shutdown of entire government agencies. At an Oval Office ceremony, Musk and Trump exchanged mutual praise and expressions of support. But within days, a bitter feud erupted between the two billionaire gangsters.

In interviews over the weekend and on Monday, Musk began voicing hostility to Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” passed by the House last week, which extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy set to expire at the end of the year. The centibillionaire did not oppose the tax cuts themselves, of course, but denounced what he called excessive “pork” in the bill. On Tuesday, he posted a comment on X calling the bill a “disgusting abomination” and urged senators to vote it down.

The conflict highlights significant divisions within the ruling class regarding how to implement extensive cuts in social programs, all at the expense of the working class—a goal that all factions of the political establishment agree on. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned of the ballooning federal deficit and a looming “crack in the bond market.” 

Musk has also denounced Trump’s tariff policy, which threatens both his own business interests—heavily reliant on Chinese markets and supply chains—and the broader global interests of American capitalism. Financial commentators have specifically pointed to the surge in gold prices and the weakening position of the US dollar, developments that pose a serious threat to Wall Street and the stability of the global financial system.

The conflicts within the ruling class intersect with the corrupt personal interests of the individuals involved. Trump has threatened retaliation against Musk’s business empire, including the cancellation of “billions and billions” in federal contracts. Tesla stock plunged more than 14 percent on Thursday, wiping out $152 billion in market value and costing Musk personally $20 billion in a single day. 

On Saturday, Trump withdrew the nomination of billionaire Jared Isaacman, a Musk customer and crony, to head NASA. Isaacman was Musk’s choice, viewed as a key ally of his lucrative—but technically challenged—SpaceX venture, which relies entirely on federal contracts.

Rolling Stone magazine reported that two Trump administration officials said the government could revive investigations into Musk’s business practices that were begun under the Biden administration, one of the main reasons for his pumping $275 million into the Trump campaign and joining it in person during the final months before the election. 

Trump added in another Truth Social post, “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!”

Musk, responding to Trump’s remarks, declared that it was “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

This—no doubt true—statement was a reference to the criminal sex trafficking by multi-millionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in a Manhattan prison cell in August 2019, officially declared a suicide, which no one believes. Trump and Epstein had longstanding friendly relations throughout the period that Epstein made his mark as a purveyor of young women to his billionaire clients. 

Musk’s post thus represents a serious threat to Trump, a dramatic escalation of the political warfare within the US oligarchy. He added in a further comment on X, “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”

By late Thursday, Musk was applauding X users who suggested that Trump be removed from office and replaced by Vice President JD Vance, and warning that Trump’s tariffs would “cause a recession in the second half of this year.” In response, former White House aide Steve Bannon called on Trump to seize control of SpaceX, because it carries out vital functions for the US military, and deport Musk to his native South Africa. Musk responded: “Bannon is peak retard.” 

In the eruption of ferocious conflicts within the state, the feud between Trump and Musk recalls the Night of the Long Knives, the 1934 bloodbath in which Hitler consolidated his dictatorship through the slaughter of hundreds of his political opponents within the Nazi party, most importantly Ernst Röhm, head of the SA brownshirts, and Gregor Strasser.

Overall, one has the picture of an oligarchy wallowing in criminality, filth and cultural degradation. Musk is the world’s richest individual, brought to the very pinnacle of political power in the first months of the second Trump administration. The New York Times reported last week that Musk was a regular user of ketamine, Ecstasy, and psychedelic mushrooms and other drugs during the fall election campaign, and that his demeanor and conduct as head of DOGE suggested that this was continuing. 

Trump’s own stability is in question as well. A tabulation by the Washington Post found that he had posted 2,262 times on Truth Social during the first 132 days of his administration, including 138 separate posts on a single day. Over the weekend, Trump retweeted a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that Joe Biden had been executed in 2020 and replaced by a series of robots. As for corruption, his personal fortune has risen by $1.2 billion since the election, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, mainly through cryptocurrency operations marketed to his supporters.

The criminality and corruption of what was the Trump-Musk administration is only the most disgusting expression of the degeneration of the American capitalist class as a whole. 

The political crisis unfolding in the United States exposes not only the character of the Trump administration—a government of, by and for the oligarchy—but also the nominal opposition. The Democratic Party has done nothing to resist the relentless drive toward authoritarian rule. As one Trump outrage follows another, the Democrats offer only feigned helplessness, maintaining the pretense that Trump is all-powerful and that they are powerless to act.

Sections of the trade union apparatus, including UAW President Shawn Fain, have embraced Trump’s economic nationalism, presenting “Buy American” demagogy as a defense of workers’ interests. The nominally independent Bernie Sanders has backed Trump’s attack on immigrants, and just this week, in response to Musk’s criticism of Trump’s tax bill, Sanders replied, “Musk is right.”

UK agrees handover of Chagos Islands to Mauritius to protect key US Diego Garcia base

Jean Shaoul

After decades of international legal battles, Britain has finally signed an agreement to hand over the Chagos Islands, home to the US/UK naval and bomber base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius. The UK government will lease back the base from Mauritius at a cost of £101 million a year for an initial period of 99 years.

Announcing the deal at the Northwood military base, near London, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the base was crucial for British counter-terrorism and intelligence and is “right at the foundation of our safety and security at home.” He added, without explanation, “By agreeing to this deal now on our terms, we’re securing strong protections, including from malign influence, that will allow the base to operate well into the next century, helping to keep us safe for generations to come”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (centre) gives a press conference after signing a deal to secure the military base on Diego Garcia at Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, May 22, 2025 [Photo by Number 10/Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0]

Britain separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius in 1965 before it became independent in 1968 and incorporated them into the specially created British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT), violating 1960 UN resolution 1514 banning the breakup of colonies before independence. In one of its most shameful episodes of post-war colonialism, it forcibly evicted up 2,000 islanders from their homes in the late 1960s to early 1970s, deporting them to Mauritius and the Seychelles, another former British colony. A leaked internal Foreign Office memo notoriously belittled the Chagossians as “a few Tarzans and Man Fridays”.

This was done to make way for the leasing of Diego Garcia, the largest island in the 50-island archipelago, to the US Naval Support Facility. Britain’s purpose in granting Washington the initial 50-year lease on Diego Garcia—kept secret from both Parliament and the US Congress—was to secure an $11 million discount on the US-made Polaris nuclear weapons system, which the Labour Party had pledged to scrap when in opposition.

The Islands occupy a strategically placed location in the Indian Ocean, halfway between India and East Africa. By the late 1980s, Diego Garcia, which hosts between two and five thousand US military personnel, had become one of the leading overseas military bases of the US and the main base available to Britain in the area. US imperialism has used Diego Garcia to support its criminal operations from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. It has facilities to accommodate nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers and large airplanes, plays a key role in US intelligence-gathering and serves as a surveillance centre for the Middle East, as well as providing a “dark site” where the CIA detained and tortured people and refueled extraordinary rendition flights.

A US Air Force B-1B Lancer taking off from Diego Garcia as part of Operation Enduring Freedom during October 2001 [Photo: enior Airman Rebeca M. Luquin, U.S. Air Force]

Britain’s decision to surrender sovereignty over the Chagos Islands comes six years after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion in 2019 noting that “the process of decolonization of Mauritius was not lawfully completed” and that the UK had violated United Nations resolutions prohibiting the breaking up of colonies before granting independence. With its customary imperial arrogance, the British government ignored this and similar rulings.

But there was another much more important opinion issued by the United Nations International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) that the British government could not ignore, despite its protestations at the time. ITLOS had ruled that the UK had no sovereignty over the Chagos Islands and thus it considered all the seas and therefore airspace around the Chagos islands as belonging to Mauritius.

Although the 2021 ruling was, like the ICJ’s, only advisory, the maritime court—a court that affects international trade—can make its opinions binding in law. It would mean that Mauritius could take legal action against Washington and London or any company supplying their operations for invading its air or sea space if they had done so without permission from Mauritius. Furthermore, Mauritius would be entitled to open up the Islands to Chinese or Russian bases.

This was a risk the US and UK governments were not prepared to take. Starmer said, “We had to act now because the base was under threat”, adding that Mauritius would have taken Britain to court within weeks and the UK had no “realistic prospect of success.”

The deal sets a 24-mile exclusion zone around Diego Garcia, where nothing can be built without UK consent. Foreign military and civilian forces will be banned from the other islands in the archipelago, with the UK retaining power to veto access to the islands, provisions aimed at China. Under the terms of the deal the UK must notify Mauritius if it plans to use Diego Garcia to launch an “armed attack on any third state” and give Mauritian companies priority when awarding contracts related to the maintenance of the base.

The UK will pay Mauritius £101 million a year, with the rent set to rise with inflation, for 99 years, at which point the lease can be renewed for up to 40 years if both sides agree. Starmer sought to justify the cost as “value for money”, even as his government plans £5 billion in welfare cuts, because it is “slightly less than the running cost of an aircraft carrier minus the aircraft”.

Starmer said the UK’s four partners in the “Five Eyes” security alliance—the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia—backed the agreement, while Russia, China and Iran opposed it. US President Donald Trump had backed the deal when he met Starmer in the White House in February, saying “I have a feeling it’s going to work out very well”. Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the deal, saying it “secures the long-term, stable and effective operation of the joint US-UK military facility at Diego Garcia, which is critical to regional and global security.”

Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam hailed the deal as a “great victory for the Mauritian nation”. He added, “I have always said we must obtain our sovereignty over the totality of the Chagos, including Diego Garcia”, adding that it symbolised the completion of “the total process of decolonisation”.

The deal rides roughshod over the claims of the 1,344 Chagossian islanders who were forcibly displaced from Diego Garcia. They have been denied the right to return to their homes, which international lawyer Professor Philippe Sands QC, said was arguably “a crime against humanity within the meaning of Article 7 of the [International Criminal Court] Statute.” Under the terms of the agreement, to be ratified by parliaments in London and Port Louis, Mauritius is “free to implement a programme of resettlement” on the islands, excluding Diego Garcia. But it does not require the residents to be resettled. The deal establishes a trust fund to benefit the Chagossians.

For more than five decades, Britain carried out one crime after another against the Chagossians while lying, ignoring court decisions, invoking Royal Prerogative and then covering up its actions. The islanders have lived in impoverished conditions ever since, with just a few allowed into Britain.

None of the promises of support and compensation were kept. Many of the islanders were simply abandoned when they landed. The islanders, as a condition of accepting Britain’s derisory offer of compensation in the 1980s, which largely failed to materialise, were required to renounce their right to return. In 2016, the British Foreign Office set up a £40 million fund to compensate the islanders. Five years later, after it had distributed just £12,000 in direct support to them, Croydon Council, tasked with assessing how to allocate the money, abandoned the work.

The displaced islanders, having fought unsuccessfully in UK courts for years for the right to go home, brought an 11th-hour legal challenge to try to stop the UK transferring sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius to enable their case for their right of return to their homeland to be settled. Later that day, another judge discharged the injunction, enabling the agreement to hand over the Islands to go ahead.

The two British Chagossians Bertrice Pompe, 54, and Bernadette Dugasse, 68, both born on Diego Garcia, who brought the injunction, accused the British government of betrayal. They have vowed to keep fighting to try to realise their dream of returning to their place of birth. Pompe said, “We’ve been ignored, we’ve been invisible, we don’t exist. They don’t even mention us. When they expelled us, everything was hidden [as if] there were no human beings on the island, just some Man Fridays. And they’re not saying it [now], they’re not pronouncing the words, but by their actions they’re doing the same thing. We’re being scammed over and over again.”

Jemmy Simon, from the Chagossian Voices group, told the BBC that there was “nothing in there [the deal] that is any good for us”. “I’m beyond horrified and angry right now.” “They [the British government] promised to look out for our best interests—absolute rubbish”, she said, adding “It is up to Mauritius to decide if we will get to resettle on the outer islands or not, but they don’t have to if they don’t want to”.

Boeing receives sweetheart deal to avoid criminal prosecution over 737 MAX crashes

Bryan Dyne

In this March 11, 2019, file photo, Boeing 737 Max wreckage is piled up at the crash scene of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 near Bishoftu, Ethiopia. [AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene]

The US Department of Justice announced Friday that it has reached a non-prosecution agreement with Boeing that will allow the aerospace giant to avoid criminal prosecution over two fatal crashes of its 737 MAX 8 aircraft that killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019.

Under the agreement, Boeing will pay approximately $1.1 billion in fines and compensation, retain a company-selected “independent compliance consultant,” and avoid the felony fraud conviction that would have threatened its status as a major defense contractor. The deal reverses a previous agreement reached under the Biden administration in July 2024, in which Boeing had agreed to plead guilty to criminal fraud charges.

The move represents the calculated intervention of the American state on behalf of the military-industrial complex. Boeing is not merely a civilian aircraft manufacturer but a cornerstone of the US military-industrial complex, receiving over $20 billion for the next-generation fighter jets and representatives accompanying President Trump on lucrative arms deals in the Middle East.

The timing of this deal is particularly significant. It comes just months after Boeing was awarded the contract for the F-47 fighter jet, designed for warfare against China, and follows Trump’s announcement of a $96 billion order from Qatar Airways brokered with Boeing’s CEO in attendance.

The legal maneuvering that enabled this outcome was brokered by US District Judge Reed O’Connor. The judge is a notorious right-winger appointed by George W. Bush, who previously served as chief counsel to Republican Senator John Cornyn. He initially rejected the plea deal from Boeing over purported concerns about diversity, equity and inclusion policies in selecting an independent monitor to reject the deal.

As Friday’s ruling exposes, O’Connor’s December finding was designed to provide time to more completely whitewash the aerospace giant’s role the 346 deaths and prevent even the previous fraud charges from sticking.

The ruling also confirms the warning made by the WSWS at the time, that the “rejection of the plea deal does not mean confidence can be placed in the US judicial system to justly punish those responsible for the deaths of 346 men, women and children. The response by the federal government is a naked expression of class justice in America.”

Attorneys for the families of the crash victims have condemned the agreement as a “slap on the wrist” and “morally repugnant.” Paul Cassell, representing many of the families, called it “unprecedented and obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in US history.”

Boeing’s crimes were not the result of mere oversight or technical failures but represented a systematic conspiracy to prioritize profits over human life. The company deliberately concealed the existence of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) from pilots and regulators, knowing that the faulty software could override pilot input and force aircraft into fatal nosedives. Internal communications revealed Boeing employees boasting about “jedi-mind tricking” regulators into approving training materials while systematically covering up the dangers posed by their aircraft.

The scale of Boeing’s criminal conduct extends far beyond the initial crashes. Even after the first crash killed 189 people in October 2018, Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration allowed the aircraft to continue flying, with internal FAA analysis determining that the MAX would average one fatal crash every two to three years. This analysis was suppressed from the public even after the second crash occurred just five months later, killing 157 more people.

The financial penalties imposed on Boeing represent a fraction of the company’s total value and the profits generated by the MAX program. The $445 million compensation fund for crash victims amounts to less than $1.3 million per death. To put Boeing’s arithmetic into perspective, the single $96 billion Qatar Airways deal that Boeing secured with Trump’s assistance is worth more than 215 times the compensation fund for all 346 victims combined.

Moreover, Boeing’s market capitalization increased by nearly $200 billion from the time the MAX was announced in 2011 until the fleet was grounded, while company executives personally enriched themselves through well-timed stock sales worth tens of millions of dollars.

The International Association of Machinists union sabotaged the recent strike by 33,000 Boeing workers at facilities across the Pacific Northwest, ensuring that Boeing’s defense production remained uninterrupted. The union apparatus worked hand-in-hand with the Biden administration to shut down the strike and maintain Boeing’s profitability, demonstrating once again that the labor bureaucracy serves as an instrument of corporate control rather than worker defense.

Boeing’s sacrifice of lives to profit is not an aberration. The ruling on Boeing comes after autoworker Ronald Adams Sr. was crushed to death on April 7 while working at Stellantis’ Dundee Engine Complex in southeast Michigan. Initial reports indicate that he was killed when an overhead gantry unexpectedly engaged and crushed his torso.