Whistleblowing
Several other actions may also be considered retaliatory, including an unreasonable increase in workloads, reduction of hours, preventing task completion, mobbing or bullying.
Such examples include John Barnett, who died on the day he was due to give deposition testimony as a whistleblower against aerospace company Boeing, and David Kelly, who was found dead two days after the UK parliamentary Intelligence and Security and Foreign Affairs Select Committees publicized that he would be called about the dubious claims used to convince the UK Parliament to vote to invade Iraq.
U.S. civic activist Ralph Nader is said to have coined the phrase in the early 1970s[5] in order to avoid the negative connotations found in other words such as "informer" and "snitch".
In addition to protecting the identity of the whistleblower, these services are designed to inform the individuals at the top of the organizational pyramid of misconduct, usually via integration with specialized case management software.
[citation needed] Implementing a third-party solution is often the easiest way for an organization to promote compliance, or to offer a whistleblowing policy where one did not previously exist.
Whistleblowing in the private sector is typically not high-profile or openly discussed in major news outlets, though occasionally, third parties expose human rights violations and exploitation of workers.
Dr. Hwang had a claim to successfully clone human embryos and derived patient-specific stem cell lines, forwarding the field of regenerative medicine which was published in the Journal of Science.
Dr Macchiarini claimed to have made profound advancements in trachea transplantation by using synthetic tracheal scaffolds planted with the patient’s own stem cells.
Whistleblowers are often protected under law from employer retaliation, but in many cases, punishment such as termination, suspension, demotion, wage garnishment, and/or harsh mistreatment by other employees occurs.
[42] Persecution of whistleblowers has become a serious issue in many parts of the world: Employees in academia, business or government might become aware of serious risks to health and the environment, but internal policies might pose threats of retaliation to those who report these early warnings.
[55] Some whistleblowers speak of overwhelming and persistent distress, drug and alcohol problems, paranoid behavior at work, acute anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks, and intrusive thoughts.
Leading arguments in the ideological camp maintain that whistleblowing is the most basic of ethical traits and simply telling the truth to stop illegal harmful activities or fraud against the government/taxpayers.
[70][full citation needed] Many whistleblowers have stated that they were motivated to take action to put an end to unethical practices after witnessing injustices in their businesses or organizations.
[82] The former Australian intelligence officer known as Witness K, who provided evidence of Australia's controversial spying operation against the government of East Timor in 2004, face the possibility of jail if convicted.
[87] This includes government departments and agencies, parent Crown corporations, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other federal public sector bodies.
In October 2021, the EU Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, Equality and the Rule of Law emphasized that ministries, as legal entities in the public sector, are also explicitly required to establish internal reporting channels for their employees.
They have noted, however, that ambiguities remain in the directive regarding application in some areas, such as "duty speech", that is, when employees report the same information in the course of a job assignment, for example, to a supervisor, instead of whistleblowing as formal dissent.
[111] The subsequent high-profile case of whistleblower Neil Pugmire who raised concerns about the release of dangerous mental health patients led to the 2000 act.
Amongst other things, under the Act protected disclosures are permitted even if a non-disclosure agreement has been signed between the employer and the former or current employee; a consultation on further restricting confidentiality clauses was held in 2019.
[116] An observational and interviewed-based study of more than 80 Guardians found that a lack of resources, especially time, reduced their ability to respond to concerns, and to analyse and learn from data.
[121] Still, a wide variety of federal and state laws protect employees who call attention to violations, help with enforcement proceedings, or refuse to obey unlawful directions.
Such qui tam lawsuits must be filed under seal, using special procedures to keep the claim from becoming public until the federal government makes its decision on direct prosecution.
Whistleblowers acting under the FCA are the primary enforcement tool used by the U.S. Department of Justice to target fraud, including overbilling to government programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare.
[140] The US Department of Labor's Whistleblower Protection Program can handle many types of retaliation claims based on legal actions an employee took or was perceived to take in the course of their employment.
Among them are the Government Accountability Project (GAP), Blueprint for Free Speech,[160] Public Concern at Work (PCaW), the Open Democracy Advice Centre[161] or in France, the Maison des Lanceurs d'Alerte (MLA).
[165] The Lamplighter Project, which aims to encourage law enforcement officers to report corruption and abuse of power and helps them do so, is named based on Serpico's usage of the term.
[169][170] In business, whistleblowing hotlines are usually deployed to mitigate risk, with the intention of providing secure, anonymous reporting for employees or third-party suppliers who may otherwise be fearful of reprisals from their employer.
[citation needed] In 2018, the Harvard Business Review published findings to support the idea that whistleblowing hotlines are crucial to keeping companies healthy, stating, "More whistles blown are a sign of health, not illness.
The 1998 film Star Trek: Insurrection involves Picard and the NCC-1701-E Enterprise crew risking their Starfleet careers to blow the whistle on a Federation conspiracy with the Son'a to forcibly relocate the Ba'ku from their planet.
[174] In July 2018, CBS debuted a reality television show titled Whistleblower, hosted by lawyer, former judge, and police officer Alex Ferrer, that covers qui tam suits under the False Claims Act against companies that have allegedly defrauded the federal government.
