The magic of unions, when it comes to safety, is that they let employees feel safe not just reporting safety issues, but outright rejecting unsafe requests. Even in union shops, unsafe directives are issued, against policy and law alike, but unlike non-union shops, workers in union shops know someone’s got their back if they call it out and/or say “no”.

Boeing outsources a lot more because of that, leading to the time when the Starliner subcontractor had to get an amputation.

Well Boeing is unable to launch anything nor deliver on their end of Commercial Crew, so maybe they need a good excuse to not have to do anything for a while.